Hank Unplugged Short—Metropolitan Kallistos on the Significance of Community

Hank Unplugged: Essential Christian Conversations

The Christian Research Institute

Education, Society & Culture, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 809 Ratings

🗓️ 4 November 2021

⏱️ 7 minutes

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Summary

Hank Hanegraaff, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Answer Man broadcast, recently spoke with the Most Reverend Metropolitan Kallistos (Ware) of Diokleia. Hank asked this remarkable servant of Christ to speak to the significance of the church—as the sphere within which union with God is accomplished. His Eminence explained that “to be a Christian does involve personal experience but not isolated experience—to belong to the community of the faith….Not ‘I’ but ‘we.’” Indeed, says Metropolitan Kallistos, “We do not come to our Savior Christ alone, isolated. But we come as brothers and sisters, sharing together in the experience of faith.” Moreover, “this sharing in faith is expressed through outward actions. Christianity is not just a theory—it is a way of life. And in that way of life we have certain actions which we call sacraments. And above all there are the two sacraments of Holy Baptism, which happens only once,” and “Holy Communion, the sharing in the Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist,” which is celebrated Sunday by Sunday. “At Baptism, the new Christian is buried and raised with Christ; at the Eucharist the members of Christ’s Body the church receive His Body….The Eucharist, by uniting the members of the church to Christ, at the same time unites them to one another: ‘We, who are many, are one bread, one body; for we all partake of the one bread’ (1 Corinthians 10:17). The Eucharist creates the unity of the church.” St. Ignatius christened the Eucharist our “medicine of immortality and the antidote against death, enabling us to live forever in Jesus Christ.” It is within the church that divine life penetrates the fabric of our humanity. The future life is infused into the present one and is blended with it so that our humanity may be transformed into the glorified humanity of the New Adam, our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, this is Hank Hennigraph, president of the Christian Research Institute and host of the Bible Instrument
0:18.1	broadcast with another Hank Unplug short.
0:21.6	I'm continuing my conversation on Hank Unplugged
0:24.9	with someone that I hope you get to know through his writings.
0:30.2	He is iconic in the Orthodox Christian world.
0:33.7	He is the author of the Orthodox Church
0:36.7	and introduction to Eastern Christianity, just one of his many writings.
0:42.7	And he is well known throughout the world as an Orthodox theologian expitor, as a metropolitan that has been used by God throughout his life to clarify
1:03.1	those things which are often complex, to take the complex, make it simple and transferable.
1:21.6	And so, once again, I want you to hear from his eminence, Metropolitan Callistus, who is a remarkable servant of Christ and is going to be talking to us in this clip about the church, the church which is not meant to be
1:29.7	an extravaganza, but a life, the sphere within which union of persons with God is accomplished.
1:38.5	Christianity knows nothing about Lone Ranger Christians.
1:44.1	It is about a community of faith.
1:46.1	And as you were explicating the fact that you had, as it were, a mystical experience in a Russian Orthodox church,
1:55.6	where you experienced the fellowship of saints those on earth and those who are beyond the earth.
2:07.0	The saints, the mother of God.
2:11.1	You experience Jesus Christ himself.
2:13.3	So you experienced the community of saints, and that can only happen within the context of the church
2:23.4	which St. Paul talks about as the ground and pillar of truth.
2:28.8	Can you speak to what's happening in so much of Christianity where it's becoming individualized as opposed
2:36.8	to the recognition that we are the community of saints?
2:42.7	I am very much in sympathy with what you are saying.
	...

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