Sakramentalna natura Kościoła w ujęciu Otto Semmelrotha

Abstract

Modern theology is searching for the way to penetrate the mystery of the Church. One of them is the so called Sacramental Ecclesiology. This trend is represented among others by the German theologian, Otto Semmelroth S.J. The article presents his views on the subject. The understanding of Christ as the „Type of all sacramentality” and the Trent dogmatic definition of a Sacrament („a visible sign, effecting the invisible grace which it designates”) constitute, according to this author, the foundation of the sacramental conception of the Church as the Mystical Body. While referring the classical differentiation of „sacramentum”, „res et sacramentum” and „res” to the Church, Fr Semmelroth presents successively the elements of its sacramental structure. The function of the sacramental sign („sacramentum”) is carried out in the Church by the community of her members. This community is treated in its integrality: joining the reality of its intentional order (the unity of members, the common will, the similarity of action, natural religious forces) to the external, purely material reality in the sense of an agglomeration of human individuals. The sacramental sign of the Church society points and conducts to the saving work of Christ („res et sacramentum” of the Church). It is the work of the Divine Mediator who comes from the Father to humanity and returns from humanity to the Father. According to Fr Semmelroth, the bipolar structure of the Church reflects this work of Christ in the Hierarchy (the Office) and the Community of the faithful (the commune). The sacramentality of the Church, as Fr Semmelroth presents it, consists in the of relation polarity between the Office and the Community. The saving work of Christ, made present in the structure of the Church, conducts finally to grace, to the life of the Holy Trinity. The Father (He Who„gives” in the intra-trinital relations) is reflected in the Hierarchy, the Son („He Who receives”) in the community of the faithful, and the specific „image" of the Holy Spirit (He Who proceeds from the fruitful union of the first Two Persoms) is the fertility of the Church, realized in its members. Fr Semmelroth indicates the fuliest approach to the sacramental nature of the Chuch by pointing to God's Trinitarian life reflected in the structure of the Church, as its deepest and final reality („res”).