THE SACRAMENTALITY OF THE CHURCH IN DUMITRU

STĂNILOAE’S THEOLOGY

The question of the Church’s sacramental nature has received significant attention in the
bilateral and multilateral ecumenical dialogues over the last six decades. As Emmanuel Clapsis noted,
the question itself was raised “because for some Christian churches and ecumenists (primarily Orthodox
and Roman Catholic theologians) the Church is the sacrament of God’s presence in the world, while
others (especially Protestant theologians) believe that while Christ is the sacrament of God’s grace in
the world, the Church must not be called a sacrament. The Church is only a privileged instrument of
God’s grace that leads to the unity in the Church of the whole world with Christ.”1 The 1982 Munich
document issued by the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Orthodox
Church and the Roman Catholic Church found therefore no difficulty in affirming the Church’s
sacramental role: “the Church manifests what it is, the sacrament of the Trinitarian koinonia, the
‘dwelling of God with men’ (cf. Rev. 21:4.”2 The reluctance of Protestant theologians to adopt the
language of the sacramentality of the Church springs from their conviction that this understanding of
the ekklesia leads to ecclesial triumphalism, obscures the distinction between Christ and the Church, and
overlooks the sinfulness of those who make up the Church. In spite of that, a certain level of consensus
on the theme of the Church’s sacramentality has been reached so far in the reports of the WCC Faith
and Order Commission (Uppsala, 1968; Accra, 1974; Bangalore, 1977; Chantilly, 1985),3 as well as in
the bilateral dialogues between the Roman Catholic Church and the Churches issued from the Reform:
“Towards a Common Understanding of the Church § 94-113” (Reformed-Roman Catholic Dialogue,
1984-1990);4 “Church and Justification § 118-134” (Lutheran-Roman Catholic Dialogue, 1993).5 The
2013 Faith and Order convergence text “The Church: Towards a Common Vision § 25-27” constitutes
another important example in this regard.6 However, the topic of the Church’s sacramentality needs
further reflections, for it remains still an unresolved theological issue in the ecumenical discussions.
The present article contributes to the debates on the Church’s sacramentality by focusing upon
the insights on the topic at stake offered by an Orthodox theologian who has remained so far largely
unknown outside the borders of Romania and Orthodoxy: Dumitru Stăniloae (1903-1993). In so doing,
the article explores Stăniloae’s approach to the theme of the Church’s sacramental nature in relation to
Christ’s mystery and emphasizes its distinctive and ecumenically-relevant characteristics. The article is
divided in three main sections: after a brief presentation of Dumitru Stăniloae’s biographical trajectory,
the article offers an overview of the theme of the Church’s sacramentality in 20th-century Roman
Catholic theology. The last and larger section discusses Staniloae’s views on the Church’s sacramental
nature.

1
Emmanuel Clapsis, “Does the Church Have a Sacramental Nature? An Orthodox Perspective,” in: Tamara Gradzelidze (ed.),
One, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolic: Ecumenical Reflections on the Church, Faith and Order Paper no. 197 (Geneva: WCC
Publications, 2005), p. 17.
2
“The Mystery of the Church and of the Eucharist in Light of the Mystery of the Holy Trinity, Munich, 30 June-6 July 1982,”
in: Jeffrey Gros, Harding Meyer, and William G. Rusch (eds.), Growth in Agreement II: Reports and Agreed Statements of
Ecumenical Conversations on a World Level, 1982-1998 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2000), p. 653.
3
Günther Gassmann, “The Church as Sacrament, Sign and Instrument: the Reception of this Eschatological Understanding in
Ecumenical Debate,” in: Gennadios Limouris (ed.), Church, Kingdom, World: The Church as Mystery and Prophetic Sign,
Faith and Order Paper no. 130 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 1986), pp. 7-11; Walter Kasper, The Catholic Church: Nature,
Reality, and Mission, transl. by Thomas Hoebel (New York, NY: T&T Clark, 2015), p. 370.
4
“Towards a Common Understanding of the Church, Second Phase 1984-1990” in: Jeffrey Gros et al. (eds.), Growth in
Agreement II, pp. 801-805.
5
“Church and Justification, Wurzburg, 1993),” in: Jeffrey Gros et al. (eds.), Growth in Agreement II, pp. 515-520.
6
The Church: Towards a Common Vision, Faith and Order Paper no. 214 (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2013), pp. 15-16.

1

 DUMITRU STĂNILOAE: BIO-BIBLIOGRAPHY IN A NUTSHELL

Dumitru Stăniloae is one of the most important Orthodox theologians of the past century and
among the most prominent voices of the Neo-Patristic movement in 20th-century Orthodox Christianity.
Author of an impressive theological corpus of 1150 titles, which includes more than 20 books, 33
translations, and hundreds of articles,7 Stăniloae, “occupies a position in present-day Orthodoxy
comparable to that of Karl Barth in Protestantism or Karl Rahner in Catholicism.”8 But unlike other
Orthodox theologians such as Georges Florovsky (1893-1979), Vladimir Lossky (1903-1958), and John
Zizioulas (b. 1931), Stăniloae is less known among Western theologians and scholars.
Stăniloae was born in 1903 in a small Transylvanian village near Brașov (Romania). His
theological training started in 1922 in Cernăuți and continued then in Athens, Munich, Berlin, and Paris.
Upon his definitive return to Romania in 1929, Stăniloae was appointed Associate Professor of
dogmatics at the Orthodox Theological Institute in Sibiu. Stăniloae was ordained to the priesthood in
1932, and few years later he was appointed full professor (1935) and dean (1936-1946) of the same
Institute in Sibiu. In 1946, the communist authorities forced him to resign as rector of the Institute and
move to the Orthodox Theological Institute in Bucharest, where Stăniloae started teaching Orthodox
spirituality. Due to his participation to the meetings of an unofficial spiritual group promoting the
hesychast tradition, he was arrested in 1958 and sentenced to five years in prison, being unjustly accused
of conspiracy against the communist regime. He was released from prison in 1963 and continued to
teach for doctoral students until 1973, when he retired. Since 1970 he has constantly been invited to give
talks at different conferences in the West. He was also one of the members of the Romanian Orthodox
Church involved in the ecumenical dialogue. In spite of the fact that his vigor was diminished
considerably by his age, Stăniloae remained active up to his death. He died at the age of 90, on the 4th
of October 1993, almost four years after the fall of the communist regime in Romania. His most
important publications are: The Life and Teaching of St. Gregory Palamas (1938);9 Jesus Christ and the
Restoration of Humankind;10 Orthodox Dogmatic Theology in 3 volumes (1978);11 Orthodox Spirituality
(1981);12 Spirituality and Communion in the Orthodox Liturgy (1986);13 The Immortal Image of God

7
For a detailed presentation of Stăniloae’s bibliography, see: Virginia Popa, Părintele Dumitru Stăniloae: bibliografie [Fr.
Dumitru Stăniloae: Bibliography] (București: Editura Trinitas, 2004; 22013); Gheorghe F. Anghelescu and Cristian Untea,
Father Dumitru Stăniloae, A Worthy Disciple of the Classical Patristics: Bio-Bibliography (București: Editura Enciclopedică,
2009); Andrei Ștefan Mărcuș, “Padre Dumitru Stăniloae: Tratti biografici e bibliografici,” in: Daniele Cogoni, Cristian Crișan,
Andrei Ș. Mărcuș (eds.), Il genio teologico di padre Dumitru Stăniloae: Prospettive antropologiche, teologiche e
sacramentali (Assisi: Cittadella Editrice, 2010), 17-47; Gheorghe F. Anghelescu, “Părintele prof. acad. Dumitru Stăniloae:
bibliografie sistematică [Fr. Prof. Acad. Dumitru Stăniloae: A Systematic Bibliography],” in: Mircea Păcurariu and Ioan I.
Ică jr. (eds.), Persoană și comuniune: Prinos de cinstire părintelui profesor academician Dumitru Stăniloae la împlinirea
vârstei de 90 de ani [Person and Communion: Festschrift on the Occasion of Dumitru Staniloae’s 90th Birthday] (Sibiu:
Editura Arhiepiscopiei Ortodoxe, 1993), pp. 16-67.
8
Kallistos Ware, “Foreword,” in: Dumitru Stăniloae, The Experience of God, Vol. I: Revelation and Knowledge of the Triune
God, transl. by Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998), p. xxiv.
9
Dumitru Stăniloae, Viața și învățătura sfântului Grigorie Palama (București: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Biser
icii Ortodoxe Române, 1938, 32006).
10
D. Stăniloae, Iisus Hristos sau restaurarea omului, Opere Complete 4 (București: Editura Basilica, 1943,32013).
11
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vols. I-III (București: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române, 1978; 21996-1997, 32003). The English translation was published in six volumes, subdividing each volume
of the original edition. See: The Experience of God: Orthodox Dogmatic Theology, 6 vols., transl. by Ioan Ioniță and Robert
Barringer (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1998-2013).
12
D. Stăniloae, Spiritualitate ortodoxă: ascetica și mistica (București: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române, 1981, 21993, 32002). English translation: Orthodox Spirituality: A Practical Guide for the Faithful and a
Definitive Manual for the Scholar, transl. by Archimandrite Jerome and Otilia Kloos (South Canaan, PA: St. Tikhon's
Seminary Press, 2003).
13
D. Stăniloae, Spiritualitate și comuniune în liturghia ortodoxă (București: Editura Institutului Biblic şi de Misiune al Bisericii

2

(1987);14 Studies in Orthodox Dogmatic Theology (1990);15 The Evangelical Image of Jesus Christ
(1991);16Jesus Christ, Light of the World and Deifier of Man (1993);17 and The Holy Trinity: In the
Beginning There Was Love (1993).18
Whoever investigates the theme of the Church as sacrament in Stăniloae’s writings needs to pay
attention to the following articles of the Romanian theologian: “The Nature of the Sacraments according
to the Three Main Christian Confessions” (1956);19 “The Number of Sacraments, the Relationship
between Them, and the Question of the Sacraments Performed Outside the Church” (1956);20 “Of the
Sacramental Aspect of the Church” (1966);21 “Creation as Gift and the Sacraments of the Church”
(1976);22 “The Mysterious Reality of the Church.” (1984).23 The third volume of Stăniloae’s Orthodox
Dogmatic Theology also offers valuable insights on the sacramental character of the Church.24 Even
though the foundation of Stăniloae’s reflections on the Church as sacrament is laid in the theology of
the Greek Fathers, his views on the topic under discussion benefited significantly from the encounter
with the sacramental ecclesiology of the Roman Catholic protagonists of the movement for liturgical
renewal: Matthias Joseph Scheeben (1835-1888) and Odo Casel (1886-1948). Almost half of the total
number of footnotes of the article titled “The Nature of the Sacraments” contains references to these
Roman Catholic theologians. As a matter of fact, a brief overview of the development of the notion of
the Church as sacrament in Roman Catholic theology must precede the analysis of Stăniloae’s
perspective on the Church’s sacramentality.

THE CHURCH AS SACRAMENT IN ROMAN CATHOLIC THEOLOGY

With the exception of a few Fathers, such as Cyprian of Cartage, Jerome, and Ambrosius of
Milan, the term ‘sacrament’ is very rarely applied to the Church in Latin patristic and medieval theology.
Even though references to the sacramental understanding of the Church are not totally absent from the
theological and spiritual literature prior to the 19th century, not too many theologians venture to attribute
a long history in Western Christianity to the concept referring to the Church as sacrament.25 For instance,

Ortodoxe Române, 1986, 22004).
14
D. Stăniloae, Chipul nemuritor al lui Dumnezeu, Opere Complete 5 (București: Editura Basilica, 1987, 22013).
15
D. Stăniloae, Studii de teologie dogmatică ortodoxă (Craiova: Editura Mitropoliei Olteniei, 1990).
16
D. Stăniloae, Chipul evanghelic al lui Iisus Hristos (Sibiu: Editura Centrului Mitropolitan Sibiu, 1991).
17
D. Stăniloae, Iisus Hristos, lumina lumii și îndumnezeitorul omului, Opere complete 6 (București: Editura Basilica, 1993,
2
2014).
18
D. Stăniloae, Sfânta Treime sau la început a fost iubirea (București: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii
Ortodoxe Române, 1993, 22005). English translation: The Holy Trinity: In the Beginning There was Love, transl. by Roland
Clark (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2012).
19
D. Stăniloae, “Ființa tainelor în cele trei confesiuni,” Ortodoxia 8:1 (1956): pp. 3-28.
20
D. Stăniloae, “Numărul tainelor, raportul dintre ele și problema tainelor din afara bisericii,” Ortodoxia 8:2 (1956): pp. 191-
215.
21
D. Stăniloae, “Din aspectul sacramental al bisericii” Studii Teologice 18:9-10 (1966): pp. 531-562.
22
D. Stăniloae, “Creația ca dar și tainele bisericii,” Ortodoxia 28:1 (1976): pp. 10-29.
23
D. Stăniloae, “Realitatea tainică a bisericii,” Ortodoxia 36:3 (1984): pp. 415-420.
24
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III (București: Editura Institutului Biblic și de Misiune al Bisericii Ortodoxe,
2003), 7-34; ET: The Experience of God, vol. V: The Sanctifying Mysteries, transl. by Ioan Ionita and Robert Barringer
(Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press), pp. 1-25.
25
Yves Congar claimed that the theme of the Church as sacrament emerged already in the 13th century: “Quand le traité des
sacrements s’est constitué techniquement, au XIIIe siècle, l’idée patristique était très présente, selon laquelle l’union du Christ
et de l’Église était le grand ‘sacrement’ presenti par Adam dans le fait d’Eve et de son union avec elle” – Un peuple
messianique - l’église, sacrement du salut: salut et libération, Cogitatio fidei 85 (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1975), 57; Mathai
Kadavil, on the contrary, pointed out that “the sacramentality of the Church was an important theme since the time of the
Fathers. This theme received a prominent place in theological discourse until the twelfth century” – The World as Sacrament:

3

the French Lutheran theologian from Strasbourg, André Birmelé, claims that “l’association Église-
sacrement est certes attestée par quelques citation de la littérature patristique, mais elle n’a jamais été
une donnée fondamentale de la théologie romaine avant le milieu du XIXe siècle.”26
In spite of the fact that the qualification of the Church as sacrament received so little stimulus
from the tradition, it became a central feature in the ecclesiology of some of the 19th-century Roman
Catholic theologians: Johann Adam Möhler (1796-1838), M. J. Scheeben, and Johann. H. Oswald
(1817-1903). Their emphasis on the sacramental nature of the Church was primarily intended to counter
the juridical approach to the church as a societas perfecta, which prevailed since the Council of Trent
and even before. That being so, in one of his books published in 1865, M. J. Scheeben explicitly stated
that

the Church, by virtue of its connection with the Incarnation and the Eucharist, becomes a
great sacrament, a sacramental mystery. Although the Church is outwardly visible, and
according to its visible side appears to be no more than a society of mere men, it harbours in
its interior the mystery of an extraordinary union with Christ made man and dwelling within
it, and with the Holy Spirit who fructifies and guides it27

In the first part of the 20th century, the idea that the Church functions sacramentally was taken
up by a large number of important German, French, and Dutch theologians such us Edward
Schillebeeckx (1914-2009), Odo Casel, Yves Congar (1904-1995), Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), Otto
Semmelroth (1912-1979), and Karl Rahner (1904-1984). Although they shared slightly different views
when explaining how the sacramental nature of the Church should be properly understood, all of them
adopted enthusiastically the idea that the Church has a sacramental significance and purpose. E.
Schillebeeckx defined the Church as “the sacrament of the risen Christ;”28 in a similar way, de Lubac
wrote that “si le Christ est le sacrament de Dieu, l’Église est pour nous le sacrament du Christ.”29 In
1953, the Jesuit theologian O. Semmelroth spoke of the Church with the help of the term ‘sacrament’:
“le Corps mystique du Christ se définit par référence à son corps physique. Mais c’est aussi cela qui
motive avant tout une interprétation de la nature de l’Église dans la perspective sacramentelle.”30 In
order not to identify the Church with Christ, he went on to say that even though the Church is called the
sacrament-source or protosacrament, it is God’s Incarnate Son who constitutes, properly speaking, “la
source de tout sacramentalité” or “le type de toute sacramentalité.”31 As for Rahner, he indicated that
“the Church is the abiding presence of that primal sacramental word of grace, which Christ is in this
world, effecting what is uttered by uttering it in sign.” And he continued by saying that “by the very fact
of being the enduring presence of Christ in the world, the Church is truly the fundamental sacrament

Sacramentality of Creation from the Perspectives of Leonardo Boff, Alexander Schmemann and Saint Ephrem, Studies in
Liturgy XX (Leuven: Peeters, 2005), p. 75.
26
André Birmelé, “La sacramentalité de l’église et la tradition luthérienne,” Irénikon 59:4 (1986): p. 482; See also: A. P. J.
Brants, “Church and Sacrament,” in: J. Lamberts (ed.), Accents actuels en théologie sacramentaire: hommage à Cor Traets,
Textes et études liturgiques XIII (Leuven: Faculteit Godgeleerdheid, 1994), 59; Peter Smulders, “L’église, sacrement du
salut,” in: Guilherme Baraúna (ed.), L’église de Vatican II: études autour de la constitution conciliaire sur l’église, tome II,
Unam Sanctam 51b (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 1966), p. 313; John M. McDermott, “Vatican II and the Theologians on the
Church as Sacrament,” Irish Theological Quarterly 71:1-2 (2006): p. 152.
27
Matthias Joseph Scheeben, The Mystery of Christianity, transl. by Cyril Vollert (London: Herder, 1954), p. 561.
28
Edward Schillebeeckx, Collected Works I: Christ, the Sacrament of the Encounter with God, transl. by Paul Barrett and
Lawrence Bright (London: T&T Clark, 2014), p. 33. The original version of this book was published in Dutch in 1959.
29
Henri de Lubac, Catholicisme, Œuvres complètes VII (Paris: Éditions du Cerf, 72003), p. 50. The first edition of the book
was published in 1938.
30
Otto Semmelroth, L’église, sacrement de la rédemption, transl. by Germain Varin (Paris: Éditions Saint-Paul, 1962), p. 39.
The book has been originally published in German: Die Kirche als Ursakrament (Frankfurt am Main: Knecht, 1953).
31
O. Semmelroth, L’église, sacrement de la rédemption, pp. 112 and 51.

4

(das Ursakrament), the well-spring of the sacraments in the strict sense.”32 Rahner’s use of the concept
of ‘sign’ was meant to avoid any identification between Christ and the Church.
The Second Vatican Council often called the Church a sacrament. This identification occurs in
the Dogmatic constitution on the Church Lumen Gentium (LG I, 9, 48, 59),33 in the Liturgical
Constitution Sacrosactum Concilium (SC 5, 26), the Pastoral Constitution Gaudium et Spes (GS 42 and
46), the Missionary Decree Ad Gentes (AG I, 5). Hermann Pottmeyer noted that “its adoption at the
Council was due in large measure to the efforts of the German bishops, led by Cardinals Döpfner (Berlin)
and Frings (Cologne), with the assistance of the theologians K. Rahner and J. Ratzinger.”34 Undoubtedly,
the most complete formulation is to be detected in LG I: “the Church is in Christ as a sacrament or as a
sign and instrument both of a very closely knit union with God and of the unity of the whole human race
(in Christo veluti sacramentum seu signum et instrumentum intimae cum Deo unionis totiusque generis
humani unitatis)”. When interpreting this statement coming from LG, scholars agree in saying that two
extremely important aspects need to be observed. First, the expression ‘as/veluti’ was introduced by the
Conciliar Fathers in order to indicate that the term ‘sacrament’ does not have the customary meaning of
the seven sacraments.35 Second, the text says that “the Church is in Christ as a sacrament.” In other
words, Christ remains the primal sacrament and the Church possesses a derived sacramentality, which
is received from and radically dependent on God’s Incarnate Son. For this very reason, the formula of
the Church as “the fundamental sacrament/the sacrament-source” was not incorporated in any of the
Council’s documents. The Church is instead called “the sacrament of salvation” (AG 5), “the universal
sacrament of salvation” (LG 48; GS 45) or “the mystery of salvation of the human race” (LG 59). Oddly
enough, twenty years later, the 1985 Synod of Bishops preferred to replace the word ‘sacrament’ with
‘mystery’36 in its Final Report, although the documents of the Second Vatican Council explicitly called
the Church a sacrament.
In the post-Vatican II period, reflections about the sacramentality of the Church have become
popular among Roman Catholic theologians. Karl Rahner, Christian Duquoc (1926-2008), Jean-Marie
R. Tillard (1927-2000), Bernard Sesboüé (b. 1929), Peter Hünermann (b. 1929), Walter Kasper (b.
1933), Hermann J. Pottmeyer (b. 1939), Louis-Marie Chauvet (b. 1942), and Josef Meyer zu Schlochtern
(b. 1950) are among the theologians who brought further clarifications to the sacramental understanding
of the Church and responded, with varying degrees of success, to the criticism – advanced mainly by
the Protestants – that the theology of the Church’s sacramentality attributes to the Church the role which
in fact pertains to Christ alone. For this reason, in his later writings, particularly after 1966, in order to
preserve the differentiation between Christ and the Church, Rahner spoke of the Church as the
Grundsakrament and reserved the designation Ursakrament only for Christ.37

32
Karl Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, transl. by W. J. O’Hara (New Your, NY: Herder and Herder, 1963), p. 18.
The Germanl edition of this book was published in 1960.
33
Peter De Mey claims that definition is so central that the entire Constitution can be said to represent a sacramental
ecclesiology: “the opening definition of the Church as ‘sacrament’ (LG 1) and its explanation that the Church is ‘one complex
reality containing a human and a divine element’ (LG 8) have guided the Council fathers in their redaction of different
chapters. It helped them to remain constantly aware that the Church only fulfils a mediatory role in the Father’s offer of
salvation through Christ and in and through the Holy Spirit.” - “The Sacramental Nature and Mission of the Church in Lumen
Gentium,” International Journal for the Study of the Christian Church 14:4 (2014): pp. 348.
34
Hermann Pottmeyer, “The Church as Mysterium and as Institution,” Concilium 6 (1986): pp. 104-105.
35
“The hesitation expressed by the word veluti in LG I pertains to the possible confusion of the believer who is used to think
in terms of seven sacraments” - P. De Mey, “Church as Sacrament: A Conciliar Concept and Its Reception in Contemporary
Theology,” in: Lieven Boeve and John C. Ries (eds.), The Presence of Transcendence: Thinking ‘Sacrament’ in a Postmodern
Age (Leuven: Peeters, 2001), p. 183.
36
Cf. P. De Mey, “Church as Sacrament,” p. 187; H. Pottmeyer, “The Church as Mysterium,” pp. 99-109.
37
Lambert Leijssen, “La contribution de Karl Rahner (1904-1984) au renouvellement de la sacramentaire,” in: J. Lamberts
(ed.), Accents actuels, pp. 84-102.

5

 DUMITRU STĂNILOAE ON THE SACRAMENTALITY OF THE CHURCH

Dumitru Stăniloae is one of the few exponents of the Neo-Patristic movement whose theological
corpus touches upon a wide range of topics. Even though Stăniloae’s theology has rather a spherical
aspect which does not allow us to prioritize one-sidedly a specific topic and to call him either a
theologian of the Trinity, of the Resurrection or of Pneumatology, the doctrine of the Church constitutes
however one of the central themes of his publications. Generally speaking, Stăniloae’s ecclesiology can
be divided in two main stages: 1) 1938-1964: he has attempted an explanation of what the Church means
by constantly portraying it as the Body of Christ and the extension of the Incarnation; 2) 1964-1993:
Stăniloae has shifted from a predominantly Christological approach to ecclesiology to a more Trinitarian
inspired vision, which elucidated even a synthesis between the Christological and the pneumatological
dimensions of the church.38 After 1964 Stăniloae’s ecclesiology has not minimized the centrality of
Christ for the Church, as his article titled La centralité du Christ dans la théologie, dans la spiritualité
et dans la mission orthodoxe39 testifies. But the presentation of the Church as the Body of Christ was
integrated into a masterly elaborated Trinitarian ecclesiology.
Although no seismic changes have occurred after 1964 in Stăniloae’s interpretation of the idea
of the Church as sacrament, certain developments could though be observed in his approach to the topic
at stake:
a) In 1956, Stăniloae pointed out that after Christ, the sacrament per excellence, the Church is
the second chief sacramental mystery in Orthodox Christianity.40 In 1978, however, he opted to speak
of the Church as the third mystery, in which God the Word restores and raises to an even higher degree
His union with the world.”41 The explanation of this change is quite simple: in the intervening period of
time, Stăniloae developed the idea that the entire creation of God has in fact a sacramental dimension.
As Stăniloae emphasized in 1976, not only Christ and the Church are to be conceived as sacraments but,
“in the large sense of the word, the whole creation is a sacrament, that is, a vehicle of God’s love and
power.”42
b) As soon as Stăniloae developed more thoroughly his Trinitarian theology, the Christological
ground of the Church’s sacramentality was placed within a more pronounced Trinitarian framework. In
Jesus Christ, the Church reveals and extends to the world the loving communion between the Father,
the Son, and the Holy Spirit. However, Stăniloae never explicitly called the Church a sacrament of the
Holy Trinity.
c) One of the particularities of the Romanian theological language lies in the fact that it
possesses three terms to express the notion of sacrament: a) taină: from the Slavic word ‘taina’; b)
sacrament: a word of Latin origin; c) mister: a noun with Greek roots. Although in his early articles on
sacraments and the Church’s sacramentality, Stăniloae made use of all these terms without any
reservation and distinction, after 1964, he preferred, however, the word ‘taină’ to any other notion.

38
Viorel Coman, “Dumitru Stăniloae on the Filioque: The Trinitarian Relationship between the Son and the Spirit, and Its
Relevance for the Ecclesiological Synthesis between Christology and Pneumatology,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 49:4
(2014): pp. 553-576; Idem, “Ecclesia de Trinitate: The Ecclesiological Synthesis between Christology and Pneumatology in
Modern Orthodox and Roman Catholic Theology,” Studii Teologice 10:3 (2014): pp. 31-70; Radu Bordeianu, Dumitru
Staniloae: An Ecumenical Ecclesiology, Ecclesiological Investigation 13 (London: T&T Clark, 2011); Sorin Constantin
Șelaru, L'Eglise, image du mystère de la Trinité: les accents ecclésiologiques de la théologie de Dumitru Staniloaë, doctoral
dissertation (Strasbourg: Faculté de théologie protestante, Université Marc Bloch, 2008), 122-137.
39
D. Stăniloae, “La centralité du Christ dans la théologie, dans la spiritualité et dans la mission orthodoxe,” Contacts 27:4
(1975): pp. 447-457.
40
D. Stăniloae, “The Nature of the Sacraments,” p. 7.
41
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III, p. 13; The Experience of God, vol. V, p. 6.
42
D. Stăniloae, “Creation as Gift,” p. 10. See also: Idem, “Darul lui Dumnezeu către noi [The Gift of God to Us],” Mitropolia
Moldovei si Sucevei 46:3-6 (1970): pp. 258-267.

6

 THE CREATED WORLD: THE FIRST SACRAMENT

Stăniloae was not the only 20th-century Orthodox theologian who explored the theme of the
world’s sacramentality. Alexander Schmemann (1921-1983)43 Philip Sherrard (1922-1995),44 and John
Chryssavgis (b.1958)45 have also emphasized that the sacrament has a cosmic significance and embraces
every single aspect of our existence. In Roman Catholic theology, the theme of the world’s
sacramentality has become a subject of intense reflections in post-Vatican II period. The sacramental
nature of creation has been appropriated by an important number of Roman Catholic theologians such
as E. Schillebeeckx, K. Rahner, L. Chauvet, and Leonardo Boff (b. 1938),46 and Kevin Irwin (b. 1946).47
The name of David Brown (b.1948)48 should be placed at the top of the list of Anglican theologians who
have addressed the question of the world as sacrament. The development of the theme of the creation’s
sacramental nature among Roman Catholic and Anglican thinkers sprung out of modern and
contemporary Western theology’s need to overcome the sacred profane dichotomy of the post-
Enlightenment deistic vision of the world and acknowledge that there is “a likeness-in-the-very-
difference between that which sanctifies (God) and that which is sanctified (creation), between uncreated
and created.”49 The extension of the sacramental meaning beyond the liturgical and sacramental
celebration had wider implications for Western theologians’ engagement with the realities of the world
and their ethical commitment to society (liberation theology, eco-theology, etc.).
In Stăniloae’s theology, the general meaning of the notion of ‘sacrament’ referred first and
foremost to the union of God with the world he created: humanity and cosmos alike. That being so, the
Romanian theologian pointed out that the union between God and his creation is to be understood as
“the most comprehensive mystery”50 or “the first sacrament”51 in the larger sense of the word. According
to Stăniloae, the entire existence, which embraces the world and humankind together, is therefore a
mystery or a sacrament: the cosmos is a sacrament (sacramental cosmology), as well as the world around
us and every human being (sacramental anthropology). Needless to say, it was the influence of St.
Maximus the Confessor’s theology of the divine logoi that guided Stăniloae’s vision of “the active
presence of the absolutely transcendent”52 in the sacrament of the world. The union between God and
cosmos contained in Stăniloae’s concept of the world as the ‘all-embracing sacrament’ “begins at the
very act of creation and is destined to find its fulfilment through the movement of creation toward that
state in which ‘God is all in all’ (1 Cor. 15:28).”53 As a matter of fact, Stăniloae’s discourse on the
world’s sacramentality reflected the basic tenets of his theology of theosis: the vocation of the whole of

43
Alexander Schmemann, “The World as Sacrament,” in: Christopher Derrick (ed.), The Cosmic Piety: Modern Man and the
Meaning of the Universe (New York, NY: P. J. Kennedy and Sons, 1965), pp.119-130.
44
Philip Sherrard, “The Sacrament,” in: A. J. Philippou (ed.), The Orthodox Ethos: Essays in Honour of the Centenary of the
Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of North and South America (Oxford: Holy Well Press, 1964), pp. 133-139.
45
John Chryssavgis, “The World as Sacrament: Insights into an Orthodox Worldview,” Pacifica 10:1 (1997): pp. 1-24.
46
Leonardo Boff, Cry of the Earth, Cry of the Poor, trans. by Philip Berryman (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1997); published
originally in Brazil as Ecologia: Grito da terra, grito dos pobres (São Paolo: Àtica, 1995).
47
Kevin Irwin, “Sacramentality and the Theology of Creation: A Recovered Paradigm for Sacramental Theology,” Louvain
Studies 23:2 (1998): pp. 159-179; Idem, “The Sacramentality of Creation and the Role of Creation in Liturgy and
Sacraments,” in: Kevin Irwin and Edmund D. Pellegrino (eds.), Preserving the Creation: Environmental Theology and Ethics
(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 1994), pp. 67-111.
48
David Brown, God and Enchantment of Place: Reclaiming Human Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004);
Idem, “A Sacramental World: Why It Matters,” in: Hans Boersma and Matthew Levering (eds.) The Oxford Handbook of
Sacramental Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), pp. 616-630.
49
J. Chryssavgis, “The World as Sacrament…,” p. 1.
50
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III, 8; The Experience of God, vol. V, 3.
51
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III, 13; The Experience of God, vol. V, 7.
52
D. Stăniloae, “The Mystery of the Church,” in: G. Limouris (ed.), Church, Kingdom, World, p. 51.
53
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III, 9; The Experience of God, vol. V, p. 3.

7

creation is to be deified by and to become channel or medium of God’s grace, while keeping its
ontological status.54 In this sacrament of the union between God and the whole of creation the human
person (defined as a ‘microcosmos’ in Maximus’s and Stăniloae’s theology) holds a place apart, for
every man and woman are the principle organs of this union of the divine Logos with the created world.
It is the human person who is supposed to deepen the logoi of creation, to bring into unity the
components of the word without destroying their diversity, and to contribute to the maintenance and
fulfillment of the deifying union between God and his entire creation. But because God’s union with the
world has significantly been weakened through the human sin, a new mystery comes into being, that of
an even closer union between Creator and his creature. This is the mystery/sacrament of God’s Incarnate
Son.

CHRIST: THE NEW SACRAMENT

Stăniloae’s treatment of the Person and the work of Jesus Christ was faithful to the essential
affirmations of the Council of Chalcedon (451) and Constantinople (681): Christ, the incarnate Word of
God, is one Person in two perfect natures, divine and human.55 As a matter of fact, Jesus Christ, as the
Person who unites in himself divinity and humanity in the supreme and most intimate way, is for the
Romanian theologian the new sacrament or mystery,56 for the paradox of union between the uncreated
and the created that was brought into being through creation appears in God’s Incarnate Son in a new
and even sharper way, cast into the highest possible relief. Since Christ constitutes the center of the most
perfect presence of God within the created reality, Stăniloae referred to the Incarnate Logos as the
original, primordial or fundamental sacrament: all sacramentality derives from and expresses the
mystery/sacrament of Christ. Said differently, as the center of the creation raised at the highest possible
union with the divine, Christ represents the root sacrament or the sacrament par excellence, i.e., the
source from whom all sacramentality comes: “The original sacrament of Christianity is Jesus Christ,
who comprises the Son of God under a visible form […] Christ himself is a sacrament, a mystery, namely
the fundamental sacrament and the basis of all other sacraments.”57 In Jesus Christ the initial purpose of
creation has been restored, because the humanity assumed by the divine Logos in his hypostasis has
been replaced in communion with God and fully deified, becoming the medium or channel through
which the divine life of God is unceasingly communicated to those who make up the Body of Christ so
that they equally advance towards resurrection and life everlasting.
Stăniloae’s designation of Christ as the fundamental sacrament implies that the sacramentality
of the Church has meaning only in and through God’s Incarnate Son. For the Romanian theologian, as
for the entire Orthodox tradition, the Church, by virtue of its intimate union with Christ, is not
understood as an isolated reality, but as a fundamental aspect of the primordial sacrament of Christ, in
whom God shares divine life with humanity. Any analysis of Stăniloae’s view on the sacramentality of
the Church needs therefore to take as a point of departure the sacramentality of Jesus Christ, in whom
the eternal God has entered into a maximum union with humanity and the entire creation.

54
D. Stăniloae, The Immortal Image of God, p. 414.
55
Unlike Edward Schillebeeckx, Jürgen Moltmann, and Wolfhart Pannenberg, to name just a few theologians who developed
a ‘Christology from below’, Stăniloae elaborated a ‘Christology from above’, with all the implications that stemmed from
such an approach. His Christology was deeply informed by the insights of the Fathers of the Church, especially Cyril of
Alexandria, Leontius of Byzantium, Maximus the Confessor, Nicholas Cabasilas, and Gregory Palamas, as well as by the
Christological contributions of different leading modern theologians such as George Florovsky, Olivier Clément, Panagiotis
Nellas, Sergius Bulgakov, Hans Urs von Balthasar, Karl Rahner, and Karl Barth. Andrew Louth adds another important
theological source for Stăniloae’s Christology, namely the liturgical texts of the Orthodox tradition - “Introduction,” in:
Dumitru Stăniloae, The Experience of God, vol. III, p. xii.
56
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III, 12; The Experience of God, vol. V, p. 5.
57
D. Stăniloae, “The Nature of Sacraments,” p. 4.

8

 THE CHURCH OF CHRIST: THE THIRD SACRAMENT

In Stăniloae’s understanding, the Church is the plantation of Christ’s risen and deified body
within the believers so that they can also die to the sin, raise, and be deified. As “the social extension of
the Risen Christ”58 or as “the communitarian Christ who has to walk, together with Christ, on the path
of the personal Christ,”59 the Church started to exist in its potential form in Christ; but the Church, which
existed potentially in Christ’s body, truly comes to life when Christ dwells (Incarnatio continua) within
human persons with his risen and deified body, making them members of his Mystical Body and
adoptive children of the heavenly Father. In light of this, Stăniloae comes to define the Church as the
third sacrament in the larger sense of the world, for it “is nothing more than the extension of the mystery
of Christ; all of it is filled with the mystery of Christ.”60 In his view, the sacramentality of the Church
presupposes the first sacrament, i.e., the sacrament of creation, but it could not have come into existence
except through the primordial and original sacrament, God’s Incarnate Son. Thus, the Church is a
sacrament of God not apart from, or even alongside with Christ, but in Christ, who is the Head of his
Mystical Body. As Stăniloae repeatedly pointed out,

the mystery of the Church is not separated from the mystery of Christ, nor that of Christ from
the mystery of the Church, given that the Church is only the extension of the mystery of
Christ and that the mystery of Christ, after Pentecost, does not stand on its own, apart from
the mystery of the Church […] the mystery of Christ has only come into being in order to
extend itself through the mystery of Christ.61

There are several ideas to be emphasized considering Stăniloae’s articulation of the

sacramentality of the Church in close relation to the mystery of Christ:
First, for Stăniloae, the sacramentality of the Church is an assertion of its vocation to extend in
time and space the sacrament of Christ and the life of the Trinity, which was made accesible to us in the
Second Person of the Trinity. This is to say that it is Christ who gives orientation to the Church and
imprints upon its members the principle of new life, i.e., his unifying and sanctifying power, to conform
them in the image and likeness of the Incarnate Word. The Church cannot therefore be reduced to a
purely historical or sociological reality, for it contains and communicates Christ, who permanently
abides in and makes it advance on the path towards transfiguration. Without going against the

58
D. Stăniloae, “Ecclesiological Synthesis,” p. 267.
59
D. Stăniloae, “Ecclesiological Synthesis,” 268. Under the influence of Stăniloae, the same definition of the Church is offered
by many Romanian Orthodox theologians – See: Dumitru Radu, “Biserica în viziunea ortodoxă [The Church in the Orthodox
understanding], Studii Teologice 54:3-4 (1997): p. 17.
60
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III, p, 13; The Experience of God, vol. V, p. 7.
61
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. III, p. 14; The Experience of God, vol. V, p. 7. In his article titled “The
Nature of the Sacraments,” (p. 7), Stăniloae quoted from M. Scheeben’s definition of the Church as sacrament, emphasizing
that “L’Homme-Dieu est le grand sacrement […] L’union hypostatique avec le Verbe est ici le mystère contenu dans le
sacrement de la chair. Cette chair elle-même, élevée par la vertu de la divinité à un mode d’existence spirituel surnaturel,
devient à son tour le mystère contenu dans le sacrement de l’Eucharistie […] En connexion avec le l’Incarnation et avec
l’Eucharistie, l’Eglise devient un grand sacrement, un mystère sacramentel; extérieurement visible, apparaissant sous cet
aspect comme une société d’hommes, elle cache intérieurement le mystère d’une union merveilleuse avec le Christ incarné
qui habite dans son sein et avec le Saint Esprit qui la féconde et dirige […] Si la base du christianisme est entièrement
sacramentelle, et si cette sacramentalité représente toute la grandeur de son essence mystérieuse, l’édifice qui s’élèvera sur
cette base aura, lui aussi, un caractère sacramentel. Si le Fils de Dieu est venu à l’humanité dans la chair visible et s’il a déposé
dans celle-ci sa puissance merveilleuse, sa présence durable ici-bas, son union substantielle ave l’humanité et toute son action
surnaturelle devront s’accomplir d’une manière sacramentelle; sinon l’édifice ne correspondrait pas à ses fonctions, l’arbre
dévierait de l’idée et de la tendance contenues dans sa racine” - Le mystère de l’église et de ses sacrements, Unam Sanctam
5 (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1946), pp. 102, 103, and 108.

9

institutional or structural aspect of the Church, the sacramental nature of the ekklesia and its character
of an event of grace distinguish thus the Mystical Body of Christ from any other earthly institution.
Second, if the Church in its totality is a sacrament which has no other purpose than to extend
Christ in the believers, to reveal and communicates the sacramentality of God’s Incarnate Son to us, it
results that the Church plays a unique and important role in the history of salvation: the Church is
necessary for salvation, for it introduces the members of the Body of Christ into the life of the Trinity.
The sacramentality of the Church as the prolongation of Christ’s sacramentality situates therefore the
Church within the history of salvation. It is not therefore by chance that Stăniloae comes to identify the
Church with the last act of Christ’s saving work begun at the Incarnation. According to him, “if the
Incarnation, the Crucifixion, the Resurrection, and the Ascension are the first four acts, then the Church
is the fifth.”62 In other words, the Church is the closing act of Christ’s economy of salvation.
Third, the Church is a sacrament only because it contains, lives, and grows in Christ. God’s
Incarnate Son is the source of the Church’s sacramental nature. In other words, the sacramentality of the
Church derives its efficacy from Christ; there is no other fountain from which all its spiritual power
flows than from the One who is the sacrament per excellence: “Christ, the primordial mystery, the
primordial sacrament and the source of all sacramentality, gives to the Church the quality of being a
sacrament.”63 In a similar way, Emmanuel Clapsis notes that “the great mystery of salvation, however,
is Christ himself, and the communion of Christ with the world in the Church is a mystery in a derivative
sense.”64 That being so, the Church must not be seen as an autonomous entity, for its sacramental nature
emerges out of and is ultimately dependent upon Christ. The fact that the Church’s sacramentality is
entirely dependent upon Christ calls into question and sanctions any possible impulse it might have
towards triumphalism, self-sufficiency, and ecclesiocentrism. In addition to that, the humbleness of the
Church is supposed to spring from the fact that it should constantly seek to conform itself to the reality
of Christ’s redemptive love, so that the Church becomes a convincing sign of God’s grace and an
instrument that transpires Christ appropriately.65
Fourth, the mystery of the Church is intimately united with and makes transparent the mystery
of Christ, but the Church is not identical with Christ. Christ transcends the Church, although he is
intimately united with it. In its sacramental expressions, the Church experiences and communicates
Christ’s divine life, but the Church should not be therefore understood as hypostatically united with
God’s Incarnate Son. The mode of union according to the hypostasis is proper to the divine and human
nature in Christ, whereas the relation between Christ and the Church, as intimate and profound it might
be, is a union through the uncreated divine energies.66 As a matter of fact, everything that the Church
receives and communicates comes from someone who is infinitely bigger than the Church. For this
reason, nothing that exists in the Church should make one’s gaze stop at the Church itself but always
direct the viewer’s gaze beyond the Church to Christ and the Trinity.
Fifth, the Christ-given sacramentality of the Church is expressed through the so-called particular
sacraments of the Church. In a certain sense, there is a mutually conditioning relationship between the
Church and its seven sacraments. The Church is both condition and result of the sacraments as much as
the sacraments are the manifestations of the Church’s sacramentality and the condition of its continuous
growth in Christ. The Church makes the sacraments and the sacraments makes the Church; or, As
Alexander Schmemann said, in fulfilling the sacraments the Church fulfills itself.67 I will turn now to

62
D. Stăniloae, Teologia dogmatică ortodoxă, vol. II, p. 201; The Experience of God, vol. IV, p. 1.
63
D. Stăniloae, “Of the Sacramental Aspect of the Church,” p. 532.
64
E. Clapsis, “Does the Church Have a Sacramental Nature? An Orthodox Perspective,” p. 22.
65
Avery Dulles points out that the Church “stands under a divine imperative to make itself a convincing sign” – Models of the
Church (Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1974), p. 63.
66
D. Stăniloae, “Autoritatea bisericii [The Authority of the Church],” Studii Teologice 16:3-4 (1964): p. 186.
67
A. Schmemann, For the Life of the World (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1963, 21973), p. 151.

10

discuss a little bit more in detail the very complex relationship that exists, according to Stăniloae,
between the Church and its sacraments.

The Church: Condition of the Sacraments

A fundamental assertion of any article and book chapter written by Stăniloae on sacraments and
sacramentality is that the Church is involved in the sacraments, for the they are nothing but the means
through which the Church extends Christ in the believers and makes them members of his Mystical
Body. Having Christ dwelling in itself, the Church possesses the authority and the instruments to
communicates to us the defying power and grace it contains in its bosom. For this reason, Stăniloae
emphasizes that the Church of Christ “is the bearer of the sacraments.”68 This is to say that the Church,
as a reality full of Christ, is “but the condition of the sacraments, a sort of mediating and instrumental
source of them.”69 That being so, the Church represents the locus of the sacraments, that is, the reality
that contains, performs, and continuously vitalizes the sacraments. Stăniloae’s remark that “the
sacraments are the continual respiration of the Church”70 comes closer to Bulgakov’s claim that “the
seven sacraments are the most important manifestation of the sacramental power inherent in the
Church.”71 But Stăniloae made clear in which sense the Church is the be regarded as the condition of
the sacraments: only in its coming from Christ and in total dependence upon him. As the embodiment
of God’s saving action, the Church in its manifestations must not be dissociated from Christ, for he
remains the actual and active source, institutor, and celebrant, as well as the spiritual content of the
sacraments performed by the Church. The Church is the derived source of them, while Christ is their
founder and center. In performing the sacraments, the Church does not represent therefore an absent
Christ, as if the Church replaces, substitutes and adumbrates Christ. In the acts of the Church’s extension
of Christ in those who make up his Mystical Body it is in fact Christ himself who extends his risen and
deified body in them.
Given his understanding of the relationship between Christ, Church, and sacraments, Stăniloae
critically reacted to the statement made by Karl Rahner in his book The Church and the Sacraments
(1960) that the historical Christ has not individually and explicitly instituted the seven sacraments;
institution of the seven sacraments is to be deduced from the Church’s sacramentality, for they emerged
out of its quality of Ursakrament. 72 According to Stăniloae, the weakness of Rahner’s theory lies in the
fact that it seems to portray grace as being too much determined by the institutional Church, as if the
graced effect flowing from the death of Christ is detached from Christ and placed at the disposition of
the Church. For the Romanian theologian, everything that the Church possesses and celebrates comes
continuously from Christ, who abides and is actively present in the Church and in its sacramental
manifestation. The Church does not to possess grace in an unconditional manner, but the presence of
Christ in the sacraments is permanently conditioned by the act of epiclesis.73 In other words, the
actualization of the Church in the sacraments essentially depends from above. It is not simply a matter
of a static and horizontal transmission of the grace inherited from Christ. The Church embodies the grace
of Christ, but at the same time continuously asks the Spirit of Christ to continue to enrich and renew the

68
D. Stăniloae, “The Nature of Sacraments,” p. 7.
69
D. Stăniloae, “Of the Sacramental Aspect of the Church,” p. 533.
70
D. Stăniloae, “Of the Sacramental Aspect of the Church,” p. 533.
71
Sergius Bulgakov, The Orthodox Church, transl. by Elizabeth S. Cram (London: The Centenary Press, 1935), p. 131.
72
K. Rahner, The Church and the Sacraments, 41. Rahner’s opinion has been shared by the Orthodox theologian Paul
Evdokimov, who said that “There is no need to find a statement of the Saviour explicitly instituting every sacrament. There
must certainly always be scriptural support, but every sacrament derives its power from the Sacrament of sacraments which
is the Church-Eucharist” – Orthodoxy, transl. by Jeremy Hummerstone and Callan Slipper (London: New City, 2011), p. 271.
73
D. Stăniloae, “Of the Sacramental Aspect of the Church,” p. 533.

11

presence of Christ in the Church. Stăniloae’s accurate understanding of Rahner’s position could be
debated, but what is really valuable in his remarks is his his concern to avoid any kind of
ecclesiocentrism, i.e., the error of attributing to the Church what in fact pertains to Christ. For Stăniloae,
all language concerning the sacramentality of the Church must respect the lordship of Christ over the
Church and sacraments.

The Church: Result of the Sacraments

Stăniloae also subscribed to the principle that the sacraments build up, constitute, and rejuvenate
the Church: “The Church is constituted through sacraments, is nourished by and extends itself through
them.”74 Not only the does Church make the sacraments, but the Church itself grows through them. On
the one hand, the sacraments have the Church of Christ as a premise. On the other hand, the Church is
maintained and refreshed through the sacraments. It seems therefore that Stăniloae echoed Henri de
Lubac’s idea that “sacramenta faciunt ecclesiam,”75 as well as George Florovsky’s assertion that “les
sacraments constituent l’Église […] c’est précisément dans les sacrements que la communauté
chrétienne dépasse les dimensions purement humaines et devient l’Église.”76 In one of its paragraphs (I,
4b), the 1982 Munich agreed document of the Joint International Commission for Theological Dialogue
between the Orthodox Church and the Roman Catholic Church made similar observations: “the Church
becomes that which it is called to be by baptism and chrismation. By the communion in the body and
blood of Chrism the faithful grow in that mystical divinization which makes them dwell in the Son and
the Father, through the Spirit.”77
It is quite important to mention at this point that Stăniloae is one of the first Orthodox
theologians who critically interacted with the principle that “the Eucharist makes the Church”, as
promoted mostly by Nicholas Afanasiev and John Zizioulas.78 Since it is not the right place to exposed
the whole criticism developed by the Romanian theologians against the basic tenets of the Eucharistic
ecclesiology,79 I will limit myself to say that for Stăniloae the depiction of the Church solely as a
Eucharistic community is in fact a narrow definition of the Mystical Body of Christ. In line with his
claim that the Church is the results of the sacraments, Stăniloae considered that the exponents of the
Eucharistc ecclesiology concentrate exclusively on the Eucharist without any solid reflection on the

74
D. Stăniloae, “The Nature of the Sacraments,” pp. 7 and 8.
75
H. de Lubac, Catholicisme, 61. See also: Paul McPartlan, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John
Zizioulas in Dialogue (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993), p. xvi.
76
G. Florovsky, “Le Corps du Christ vivant, une interprétation orthodoxe de l’église,” in: G. Florovsky et al. (ed.), La saint
église universelle: confrontation œcuménique, Cahiers théologiques de l’actualité protestante, no. 4 (Paris: Delachaux et
Niestlé, 1948), p. 18.
77
“The Mystery of the Church…,” p. 653.
78
For a comprehensive introduction into the theology of the Eucharist ecclesiology, see: Nicholas Afanasiev, “L’Église qui
préside dans l’amour,” in: N. Afanasiev et al., La primauté de Pierre dans l’église orthodoxe (Neuchâtel/Paris: Delchaux et
Niestlé, 1960), pp. 57-100; Idem, “Una Sancta. En mémoire de Jean XXIII, le pape de l’Amour,” Irénikon 36:4 (1963): 436-
475; John Zizioulas, Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary
Press, 1985); Idem, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop during the
First Three Centuries, translated by Elizabeth Theokritoff (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001; originally
published in Greek in 1965).
79
To have a better grasp of Stăniloae’s position vis-à-vis the principles of the Eucharistic ecclesiology, see: Viorel Coman,
Dumitru Stăniloae’s Trinitarian Ecclesiology in the Context of the Debates on the Filioque: The Synthesis Between
Christology and Pneumatology in Ecclesiology, Doctoral Dissertation (Leuven: Catholic University of Leuven, 2016), pp.
325-343; Radu Bordeianu, “Orthodox-Catholic Dialogue: Retrieving Eucharistic Ecclesiology,” Journal of Ecumenical
Studies 44:2 (2009): pp. 239-265; Lucian Turcescu, “Eucharistic Ecclesiology or Open Sobornicity,” in: L. Turcescu (ed.),
Dumitru Stăniloae: Tradition and Modernity in Theology (Iași: The Center for Romanian Studies, 2002), pp. 83-103.

12

relevance of all the other sacraments for the life of the Church: Baptism, Chrismation, etc. For him, the
Eucharist is the foundational principle of the Church, but Baptism and Chrismation need to be equally
seen as sacraments that make or build up the Church. Due to the fact that the Baptism and the
Chrismation are fundamental preconditions for receiving the Eucharistic Body of Christ, the Romanian
theologian claimed that the Church should be defined as a sacramental community rather than as a
Eucharistic community:

But even though the Church, as the Mystical Body of Christ, finds its summit in the Eucharist,
one should take into consideration that the Eucharist can be received only by those who are
baptized and anointed with Holy Chrism, that is, by those who are already members of the Church
[…] For this reason, the Church cannot be defined only as a Eucharistic community. Much more
adequate is its designation as sacramental community.80

In Stăniloae’s perspective, however, not only those acts that are properly called sacraments build up the
Church; all the other actions performed by the Church, i.e, readings of the Scriptures, prayers, ascetical
struggles, which are not sacraments in the strict sense of the word but prolongations of the grace of the
sacraments, contribute to the Church’s spiritual growth.81 In so doing, Stăniloae has attempted to
integrate the Eucharist ecclesiology and the so called therapeutic ecclesiology into an organic whole.
But once again Stăniloae made clear that according to his understanding the sacraments
constitute the Church only because the grace they offer comes permanently from above, that is, from
Christ in the Holy Spirit. In this regard, the basis of the Church’s existence and its source of life remains
Christ, for the Church is not a self-sufficient reality which circles in itself (Church – sacraments;
sacraments – Church); but its existence and vigour ultimately depend upon Christ.

CONCLUSIONS

By way of conclusion several ideas need to be mentioned in regard to Stăniloae’s approach to

the Church’s sacramentality and its ecumenical relevance.
First of all, it is important to notice that the theme of the Church’s sacramental nature is a central
motif in Stăniloae’s ecclesiology, flowing from his theology of the Church as Christ’s Mystical Body.
Although there is always the risk of promoting a triumphalist ecclesiology when linking so intimately
the Church with Christ and envisioning it as sacrament, Stăniloae’s exploration of the Church’s
sacramentality could serve rather as a solid basis for the development of a kenotic ecclesiology. For the
Romanian theologian, the Mystical Body of Christ is a ‘sacrament’ by its relationship with Christ, not
in itself. This is to say that the Church is not grounded in itself but directed to something that is beyond
itself: Christ. Christ is in fact the sine qua non of the Church’s existence as sacrament, for God’s
Incarnate Son is the sacrament per excellence and the source of all sacramentality. Since everything that
the Church possesses comes again and again from God as a gift, it must always live in an attitude of
humility and gratitude.
Second, Stăniloae’s doctrine of the Church’s sacramentality holds in balance a God-oriented
ecclesiology and a world-oriented ecclesiology. On the one hand, a God-oriented ecclesiology emerges
out of the doctrine of the Church as sacrament because as a concrete event/institution which God uses
to penetrate history and restore our communion with him, the Church should always orient itself towards
the source of all sacramentality and fashion itself into a fitting receptacle and instrument of God’s loving

80
D. Stăniloae, “The Authority of the Church,” p. 546 [emphasis mine].
81
D. Stăniloae, “The Authority of the Church,” p. 553.

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and redeeming grace. As a matter of fact, the Church’s earthly, created and human aspect stands
permanently in need of conversion and repentance, in order to be able to make God’s divine love
transparent to the world. On the other hand, a world-oriented ecclesiology emerges out of the doctrine
of the Church as sacrament because as a channel for the grace of God the Church must reach out the
world and reveal to it the vocation of the entire cosmos: the communion with God. For this reason, the
Church is in itself a permanent and witnessing act or event. It is not therefore by chance that Stăniloae
pointed out the Orthodox Church can no longer hermetically close itself to the world and society; on the
contrary, the Church has to develop a fruitful dialogue with the larger society and make clear the positive
meaning of the world which God has created as a medium of communion with us. That being so, the
Church must “remain open to embrace both humanity and cosmos; it must take into account both the
aspirations of all humankind and the results of modern science and technology.”82
Last but not least, Stăniloae’s use of a sacramental language for the Church’s sacramentality
sets the foundation of an apophatic ecclesiology, without downplaying the elements of a cataphatic
doctrine of the Church. The Church’s created, earthly, and human aspect, which is used by God to
communicate himself to us, does not exhaust the whole reality of the Church; there is always something
more in the texture of the Church. As such the Church cannot be exhaustively described or defined, for
it is permanently more than its members can observe or experience.

82
D. Stăniloae, “The Problems and Perspectives of Orthodox Theology,” in: D. Stăniloae, Theology and the Church, transl. by
Robert Barringer (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1980), p. 226.

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