Page 333 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

W H AT I S S E C U L A R I Z AT I O N
What Is Secularization?
The presence of the Church in history raises an unavoidable
question: what is her relationship to history? Is she not
herself “flesh of the flesh” of the historical life of humanity?
Can she deny her role in shaping history and live only from the
vision of the last things? Does an eschatological understanding
of the Church paralyze her action in the world?
The answer is not simple.
The historical existence of the Church has its foundation and
source in the Incarnation of the Lord. If the Church is under-
stood Christologically, as the Body of Christ extended through
the ages, then she cannot be separated from history. Like Christ
Himself, she is incarnate in history. For the Lord did not assume
human nature in the abstract; He assumed it at a particular mo-
ment, within a specific people, in a concrete place. Thus the
Church necessarily becomes local, marked by the cultural par-
ticularities of language, art, and life. At the same time, she acts
upon the culture in which she is embodied, shaping it through
her message and her presence.
This has always been the case in the life of the Church. Only
in modern times, particularly after the Enlightenment, has her
cultural role been questioned, and the view emerged that she
should be confined to narrowly “religious” functions—as though
religion were not, by its very nature, a force shaping culture.
Yet the Incarnation itself reveals the proper measure of this
relationship. The Lord assumed history, but He did not become
identical with it. Throughout His earthly life He remained a
stranger and a sojourner, having “nowhere to lay His head.” He
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