https://doi.org/10.21697/stv.17299
This article develops a comprehensive Eastern Orthodox account of the Church as the “icon” of the Holy Trinity. Grounded in Scripture (Jn 17; 1 Cor 10; Eph 4) and the patristic tradition, it argues that ecclesial unity is neither administrative uniformity nor a merely sociological ideal, but sacramental participation in the trinitarian koinonia. Patristic sources (Ignatius of Antioch; the Cappadocians; Cyril of Alexandria; John Chrysostom) provide the conceptual grammar by which the Church’s unity-in-diversity mirrors the perichoretic unity of the divine persons. Building on this foundation, the article presents a synthetic reading of Vladimir Lossky’s mystical-apophatic ecclesiology and John D. Zizioulas’s ontology of person and communion. Lossky interprets the Church as the sacramental icon—an effective image—of trinitarian life, most fully manifested in the Eucharist through the epiclesis of the Holy Spirit. Zizioulas relocates ecclesiology within an ontology in which to be is to be-in-communion; the local eucharistic community gathered around the bishop is the “catholic” Church made present. The study concludes by outlining ecumenical implications: Eucharist-centered communion, synodality and primacy understood sacramentally, and a vision of catholicity that holds together multiplicity of traditions without division. Thus, the Orthodox notion of the Church as icon of the Trinity offers a robust theological framework for contemporary dialogue and for reimagining unity as communion rather than centralization.
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