The seduction of idolatry and the advent of a Church without mission

This article is the transcription of a plenary lecture delivered by Greek lay theologian Thanassis N. Papathanassiou. It is a critical theological reflection on the institutional drifts of the Church and their relationship to Christian mission. The author analyzes the risk of an insidious transformation of faith into idolatry when the Church claims to possess the living God rather than to serve him, thereby reducing Christian life to a ritual observance administered by a clerical caste. The central idea is that the lex credendi and the lex orandi must be rooted in the lex sequendi, that is, in the effective following of Christ. The theological contribution of this piece lies in the articulation between ecclesiology, missiology, and anthropology: the human being is called to become the image of God, and the Church can only manifest the Kingdom by refusing to conflate itself with the worldly logics of power.