THE TEMPLE WITHIN: A FORGOTTEN THEME OF EARLY CHRISTIAN ECCLESIOLOGY

Abstract

In the modern ecclesiological theories, there is chiefly accentuated the vision of the church as an institution and its order, which is supposed to mirror the future kingdom of God. Recently, the different models of eucharistic ecclesiologies have become particularly fashionable. They are centered on the liturgical celebration of the eucharist as a self-constituting act of the church. However, they pay almost no attention to the spiritual disposition of the members of the church who participate in the eucharist. In this article, I try to briefly demonstrate the contribution of the early Christian practice of the interiorization of liturgy to the search for a creative response to the challenges of the contemporary church.