Έκκλησία w Księdze Apokalipsy Św. Jana ‒ Kościół powszechny czy lokalny?

Abstract

This article is an attempt to examine the meaning of the Church in the Book of Revelation. Many of the interpreters are claiming that the sense of Greek term έκκλησία is limited to a particular community in its socio-political context. As a result the Church should denote only a single local community. The literal context, in which the Greek noun έκκλησία occurs, is mostly the same. The first part of the book (Rev 1-3) with the section of the messages to the seven churches of Asia Minor contains almost all of the occurrences of the term in question (19 of 20 in the whole book). The expression: “what the Spirit says to the churches”, present in each of the messages, seems not to develop the meaning of the έκκλησία very significantly. In the epilogue we will find it once more (Rev 22, 16) with a similar meaning. Surely, for the author of Revelation, his vision of the Church begins with the local community, called with a proper name. But there are also two important factors that allow us to see the Church in the Apocalypse of John, named έκκλησία, as the Church in her entirety. The first one is the symbolic meaning of the number of the local churches. Number seven, in the whole book, describes something in its wholeness, in its completeness and in its totality. The same should be applied to the Church. And the second one is the contents of the seven messages: encouragements and eschatological promises made to those who win; they go beyond the context that one local community can suggests. So it leads to the conclusion that the Book of Revelation presents a very profound view of ecclesiastical community, treated in its large sense.