The father's eternal freedom: the personalist trinitarian ontology of john zizioulas dario chiapetti
The Father's Eternal Freedom: The Personalist Trinitarian Ontology of John Zizioulas Dario Chiapetti
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Pro unitate Christianorum
Tu es sanctus Dominus Deus solus, qui facis mirabilia. Tu es fortis, Tu es magnus, Tu es altissimus, Tu es rex omnipotens, Tu Pater sancte, rex caeli et terrae. Tu es trinus et unus Dominus Deus deorum, Tu es bonum, omne bonum, summum bonum, Dominus Deus vivus et verus.
Francis of Assisi, Laudes Dei altissimi, La Verna, 1224
Foreword ix
Note on Citations xvii
Abbreviations xix
Introduction: General Aspects of the Figure and Thought of Zizioulas 1
Part 1 Zizioulas’ Reading of the Fathers: The Notion of Person and the Doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father 9
Chapter 1 The Emergence of the Attribution of Primary Ontological Content to the Notion of Person in Trinitarian Reflection 11
Athanasius: From the Nicene Doctrine of Homoousion to Reflection on the Relational Character of Ousia 12
The Cappadocians: The Ontological View of Hypostasis as Tropos Hyparxeōs of Ousia 23
Maximus the Confessor: The Personalist Deepening of the Notion of Hypostasis as an Ontological Principle of the Freedom of Nature 84
Chapter 2 The Father, the Ontological Principle of the Triune and One Being of God
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics: God as the Aitia of the Trinitarian
Part 2 Zizioulas’ Theological Development: The Father, Free Cause of Being as Personhood-Freedom 161
Chapter 3 The Father: ‘The Ultimate Reality of God’s Personal Existence’ 163
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 163 The Father as Trinity, as Ontological Principle of God’s Triune Being 191
The Father as the One, as the Ontological Principle of the One Being of God 208
One Trinitarian Principle of the Triune and One Being of God: The Father as Existence for the Other for the Sake of Personal Reality 232
Chapter 4 The Freedom that ‘Springs from the Very Way the Hypostases are Constituted’: From the Freedom of the Father, the Freedom of God 235
Divine Personhood: Freedom as a Mode of Existence Caused in the Timelessness of the Unity of Nature
Foreword
John Zizioulas, metropolitan of Pergamon, is one of the most significant theologians of the late twentieth and early twenty-fi rst centuries. He is well known not only to Orthodox Christians but also more widely through the publication of his books in several Western languages and, more importantly, his engagement with fundamental theological and philosophical themes that transcend confessional boundaries. He is a thinker, however, who frames his thoughts in essays and articles rather than in monographs. His most influential books, Being as Communion (1985) and Communion and Otherness (2006) are indeed collections of articles united by a common theme. Th is means that his seminal ideas are not developed systematically, as one would expect to fi nd in a monograph. He returns to them frequently in different articles, examining them from various angles in ways that are not easily summarised. Herein lies the fi rst important feature of Dario Chiapetti’s book: its systematic exposition of Zizioulas’ personalist trinitarian ontology gathered from a great many of the metropolitan’s occasional writings. Such a systematic exposition, already initiated by Aristotle Papanikolaou in his book Being with God (2006), has now been carried forward in a significant way.
The second important feature of Chiapetti’s book is its thorough examination of Zizioulas’ patristic sources and its demonstration that he stands in continuity with the patristic age. This continuity has often been controverted. Although hailed by some as ‘a modern Father of the Church’, Zizioulas has been accused by others of mishandling his patristic sources under the guise of expounding them, and of insidiously introducing ideas deriving from modern personalism and existentialism. His philosophical enterprise has been ably defended by a number of scholars – to engage with contemporary personalism and existentialism
does not make him an ‘existentialist’ any more than engaging with the dominant philosophical tradition of their own time made the Cappadocians ‘Neoplatonists’ – but the interpretation of the patristic sources on which Zizioulas bases his arguments remains problematic. Chiapetti carefully examines the key notions of ousia (being), hypostasis (subsistent entity), tropos hyparxeōs (mode of existence), prosōpon (person as a relational concept), and koinōnia (communion) in their patristic setting and shows convincingly that Zizioulas’ reflection on these notions, while treating them creatively, does not distort their meaning as determined by patristic usage.
The third important feature of the book is its demonstration of the internal coherence of Zizioulas’ thinking. The metropolitan’s theology of communion has often been welcomed as a counterweight to Western individualism. It is certainly true that he regards Western individualism (which he traces to Augustine and Boethius) as deplorable because it treats the ‘other’ as a threat rather than as a necessary constituent of relation. Yet at the same time, he lays great emphasis on the particular, on the hypostatic. This approach has yielded important results for how we are to conceive of the Trinity. Traditionally, we have tended to think of the one God as a unified essence differentiated as three hypostaseis or persons. Logically, the unity comes fi rst (reflecting, perhaps, the monistic ontology of the ancient Greek philosophers), with the differentiation of the persons following upon this. Zizioulas, basing himself on Athanasius and the Cappadocians, has reversed the generally assumed logical order: it is the three persons who constitute the oneness, not the oneness that is differentiated as three persons. Th is is because the cause of the divine being is the Father, who is a particular hypostasis, not an undifferentiated essence. The Father has priority (in a causal, not a temporal, sense) and is thus the cause of the being of the Son and of the Spirit. ‘Father’ is a relational term. The persons of the Trinity are constituted by their relations. They are not the relations themselves, but it is their relations that determine their being. As St John Damascene says, ‘the Father never existed when the Son did not exist, but at the same time there was a father and a son begotten from him, for a father cannot be called such without a son’ (De fide orthodoxa , 8). The oneness of God rests not in the sameness of essence but in the monarchy of the Father, who freely and eternally begets the Son and pours forth the Spirit.
The taxis of the Trinity thus conceived, an ordering and a unity inseparable from the mutual perichoresis of the persons, fully accords with the economic Trinity as revealed in the Scriptures. The Son and the Spirit are sent into the world by the Father, in economic but not
ontological subordination to him, in order to make the Father known. Such a patterning is also reflected in the communion of Church, where, at least in principle, the faithful are united in the body of Christ under the presidency of the bishop in order to be transformed eucharistically and become in communion with each other what they were created to be.
In the twenty-fi rst century, students of patristic thought have been much influenced by John Zizioulas. Some, however, such as Sarah Coakely and Morwenna Ludlow, have attacked Zizioulas’ insistence on the priority of persons over substance; in her volume, Gregory of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern (2007), Ludlow claims that this priority ‘does not do full justice to the richness of the Cappadocian understanding of divine being’. Others, such as Lucian Turcescu and Alan Torrance, have objected strongly to what they see as Zizioulas’ illegitimate use of modern ‘personalist’ ontology. Dario Chiapetti in this outstanding book faces these challenges squarely, vindicating Zizioulas as an accurate patristic scholar an enabling us to appreciate in considerable detail the brilliant structure and coherence of his trinitarian thinking.
Norman Russell February 2021
Preface
Th is study is an examination of John Zizioulas’ personalist trinitarian ontology. The expression ‘personalist trinitarian ontology’ refers to Zizioulas’ reflection on being, founded on the notion of person, as encountered at the intra-trinitarian level (for it is within the Trinity that Zizioulas sees the full realisation of personal reality), the understanding of which is rooted epistemologically in the event of divinehuman communion, particularly in the Eucharistic synaxis. That said, attention is focused on Zizioulas’ reflection on the person of the Father as the primary ontological reality of trinitarian personal being. His understanding of the Father as the principle of distinction and foundation of the trinitarian personal union will therefore be studied as the incausate ontological cause of being as personal being, trinitarian being and ontological freedom. The study will conclude with an examination of the notion of ontological freedom in the case of the caused person, with reference to the Son, the Holy Spirit and humanity. The question of the ontological principle of the Trinity, on which much of Zizioulas’ speculative activity has focused, concerns the heart of the trinitarian mystery and therefore of the Christian faith. When this question is examined in relation to the reality of the person – primarily that of the Father – and of freedom, it reveals important implications on the level of anthropology, ecclesiology and pastoral care, as well as of Christian ecumenism and dialogue with the Abrahamic religions. Zizioulas’ thought acquires even more relevance when one considers ‘how little ontological investigation into the meaning of freedom is carried out by modern theologians’, according to Tillich, ‘given the immense role the problem of freedom has played in the history of theology’.1 It should
1. As recalled by R. Knežević, ‘Homo Theurgos: Freedom According to John Zizioulas and Nikolai Berdyaev’, p. 1, at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:
be added that the evaluation of Zizioulas’ proposal by scholars is still debated and, although there are many publications on the subject, there is still no specific doctoral study. In fact, many critics object to Zizioulas’ lack of adherence to the Fathers of the Church on whom he claims to base his reflection, which reveals a subordinationist understanding of the Trinity, they claim, due to modern philosophical projections. Other scholars, while favouring his ontology of the person, seem to waver when their examination reaches the theological vulnus represented by the assumption that the Father constitutes the only ontological principle of trinitarian being. On the other hand, it is worth noting that Zizioulas has always endeavoured to show that the doctrine of the ontological monarchy of the Father is the most appropriate one for accounting for the data of Scripture, patristic texts, conciliar formulations and the lex orandi, as well as the salvific content of trinitarian dogma, with its existential value for humanity today.
There are a number of difficulties in approaching Zizioulas. The fi rst consists in the unsystematic nature of Zizioulas’ reflection, which requires patient exegetical and hermeneutical work on his vast, fragmented production, which in some cases is not easy to fi nd. The second difficulty lies in the very object of the reflection. The question of the cause of being, in the horizon of trinitarian ontology, poses complex questions, which are located ‘at the limits of ontology’2 and meet an obstacle in the human mind itself, marked as it is by the ‘experience of fragmented time’. 3 The third difficulty consists in the interpretation of the Fathers, and in particular of their intra-trinitarian reflection. Th is is a very difficult task, as will be seen with regard to the patristic studies that will be examined, which from time to time present a multiplicity of interpretations that are often not easy to harmonise.
At a general level, this study aims to present Zizioulas’ proposal in a systematic way and to verify its conformity to dogma and its internal coherence. Specifically, it intends to ascertain what role should be 089576a0-a649-43ba-9055-86474e4f0964/download _fi le?fi le _format pdf &safe_filename Homo%2520Theurgos-3.pdf&type_of_work Thesis (accessed 29 April 2020). Knežević refers to P. Tillich, Systematic Theology (Digswell Place: James Nisbet, 1968), p. 202.
2. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. by D.H. Knight (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2008), p. 60.
3. ‘Trinitarian Freedom: Is God Free in Trinitarian Life?’, in G. Maspero and R. Wozniak (eds), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions and Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology (London: T. & T. Clark, 2012), pp. 193–207, here at p. 202.
given to the patristic foundation of Zizioulas’ theological discourse, the plausibility of his reading of the Fathers, his theological development and the role played by his recourse to modern philosophy, especially existentialist philosophy.
After analysing the sources and the hermeneutical and epistemological questions, I shall examine Zizioulas’ patristic reading, proceeding in a historical-comparative way and comparing it with the texts of the Fathers themselves and patristic studies of them. On that basis I shall identify and examine the theological development that Zizioulas brought to patristic reflection. Accepting the hermeneutic principle that Zizioulas says he kept in mind when approaching the Fathers, namely, that a systematic theologian, unlike a historian, must ‘make explicit what is implicit’4 in order to deepen our understanding of dogma, I shall try to make explicit what seems to be implicit in Zizioulas himself.
The primary sources of my research are Zizioulas’ literary corpus, which consists almost entirely of articles, mainly in Greek, English and French. First, there are the trinitarian writings – including the more Christological and pneumatological ones – and the anthropological writings. In second place, there are the epistemological, sacramental and ecclesiological writings. These sources are studied in chronological order, in order to grasp the development of the author’s thought, using the editions in the original language and comparing them with the official translations, where present. Alongside Zizioulan sources are patristic, magisterial and scriptural sources. Studies on the author, together with patristic, philosophical, theological and historical studies of dogma, as well as manuals, dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopaedias, complete the bibliographical apparatus.
After a general introduction to the life and thought of John Zizioulas, in which a fi rst look is taken at Zizioulas’ notion of personhood and his Eucharistic epistemology, the work is divided into two parts, each consisting of two chapters. The fi rst part is on Zizioulas’ reading of the patristic texts that form the basis of his reflection. Such an analysis is necessary, fi rst, because of the authority Zizioulas acknowledges in the Fathers, second, in order to assess the possible merits of criticisms that have been made of aspects of his theology that he traces back to patristic teaching and, third, in order to identify the theological developments in his proposal in Part II.
4. ‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor’, in M. Vasiljevic (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2013), pp. 85–113, here at p. 108.
The second part aims to identify and examine the elements that constitute Zizioulas’ theological development with regard to patristic thought. The fi rst of its two chapters examines his personalist ontology, specifically that which constitutes the fundamental reality of God’s personal existence, namely the person of the Father. After clarifying the fundamental meanings of the notion of freedom in reference to the Father, in its meanings of freedom for and freedom from, I address two fundamental questions: the role of the Father in the Trinity, as a principle of distinction – ‘the Father is Trinity’ – and his role as the foundation of henōsis – ‘the Father is the One’. I shall thus attempt to clarify in what sense the Father is understood by Zizioulas to be the sole cause of trinitarian being, and how his being is understood as an uncaused cause, ontologically free and the cause of ontological freedom.
The second chapter of Part II addresses the question of the personal being of the person caused and therefore tries, with reference to the Son and the Holy Spirit, to verify whether there is a difference, qualitatively speaking, between the ontological freedom of the person caused and that of the person causing. I conclude with a comprehensive and critical survey of the results of my research.
Patristic texts are cited in the standard form, with the titles in Latin. With regard to Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium, the following should be noted. The work is cited by Zizioulas mainly from Migne, sometimes from Jaeger, and sometimes in an unspecified manner. For consistency the bibliographical references of this work are to Migne.
Th is book is the English language edition, abridged, adapted and with some modifications, of the Italian original, La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre. Uno studio sull’ontologia personalista trinitaria in Ioannis Zizioulas, which was based, in turn, on my doctoral research, conducted under the direction of Professors Basilio Petrà and Konstantinos Agoras, and successfully defended in December 2020 at the Facoltà Teologica dell’Italia Centrale, Florence. I thank Norman Russell for the valuable work of editing the text. Special gratitude goes to my mother.
Dario Chiapetti May 2021
Note on Citations
Zizioulas’ texts are quoted without mentioning the author’s name. These texts were mostly published initially as articles. Subsequently many were translated and collected in book form. Bibliographical references are generally to the fi rst published edition. Where the text has been republished without change in a more readily available publication, however, I have generally referred to that publication.
Abbreviations
CChr.SL Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina (Turnhout: Brépols, 1954-).
DZ H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, ed. by P. Hünermann, Italian trans. by A. Lanzoni and G.B. Zaccherini, Bologna, 5th edn, 2009 (original version: Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1991).
GNO Gregorii Nysseni Opera, ed. by W. Jaeger et al. (Leiden: Brill, 1921).
GNOD Gregorio di Nissa, Opere Dogmatiche [Dogmatic Works], ed. by C. Moreschini (Milan: Bompiani, 2014).
PA St Gregory of Nazianzus, Poemata Arcana, ed. by D.A. Sykes and C. Moreschini (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).
PG J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Graeca, 161 vols (Paris, Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–66).
PL J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series Latina, 217 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–64).
General Aspects of the Figure and Thought of Zizioulas
A Brief Sketch of the Main Biographical and Bibliographical Details
The Metropolitan of Pergamon, John Zizioulas, probably the most important Orthodox theologian of our time,1 was born in 1931 in Macedonia, completed his studies at the Universities of Thessaloniki and Athens, and continued his education at Harvard. The intellectuals he met during his studies included Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), John Meyendorff (1926–92) and Paul Tillich (1886–1965). He is deeply committed to ecumenical activity, working with the Faith and Order Commission of the Ecumenical Council of Churches and, more recently, as co-president of the International Joint Commission for Theological Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches. He is also an active academic lecturer in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Athens and Thessaloniki. In 1986, while still a layman, he was appointed Metropolitan of Pergamon by the Patriarch of Constantinople and received all the priestly grades up to episcopal ordination on 22 June of that year.
Zizioulas’ theological literary output, which unfolds over a period of about fi ft y years, begins with his doctoral thesis, written under the guidance of Georges Florovsky, entitled: ‘The Unity of the Church in the
1. Cf. W. Kasper’s Preface to Comunione e alterità, the Italian translation by M. Campatelli and G. Cesareo (Rome: Lipa, 2016) of Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. by P. McPartlan, with a Foreword by R. Williams (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006).
Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Th ree Centuries’ (in Greek, 1965).2 His output continued with the publication of numerous essays, articles for journals and papers given at conferences. In some cases, these writings have been collected and published in order to provide a more unified presentation of his thought. Among the most significant essays may be mentioned: ‘From Mask to Person: The Contribution of Patristic Theology to the Concept of the Person’ (in Greek, 1976);3 ‘Hellenism and Christianity: The Meeting of Two Worlds’ (in Greek, 1976);4 and the entry ‘Orthodoxy’, which he edited for the Encyclopaedia of the Twentieth Century (1980). With regard to the present study, mention may be made of ‘The Father as Cause: Person Generating Otherness’ (2006); ‘On Being Other: Towards an Ontology of Otherness’ (2006); ‘Trinitarian Freedom: Is God Free in Trinitarian Life?’ (2012); and ‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor’ (2013). With regard to collections of articles or academic lectures, I would mention: L’être ecclesial (1981), published with some modifications in English as Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (1985); Creation as Eucharist: A Theological Approach to the Problem of the Environment (in Greek, 1992);5 Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church (2007); Lectures in Christian Dogmatics (2009); The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World Today (2010).
2.
3.
(Athens, 1965). English translation by E. Theokritoff as Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross, 2001).
English translation by N. Russell under the title ‘From Mask to Person: The Birth of an Ontology of Personhood’, Part I of Chapter 1, ‘Personhood and Being’, in Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), pp. 27–49.
4. «Ἑλληνισμὸς
in K. Paparrigopoulos,
, vol. 6 (Athens: Eleft heroudakis, 1976, 2003).
5. Ἡ Κτίση
(Athens: 1992).
Zizioulas’
Theological and Philosophical References
6
In framing the figure of Zizioulas, the fi rst aspect to consider is his place in the strand of theological tradition known as the neopatristic synthesis, that is, the theological trend that saw in Florovsky its initiator, and that proposes to reconsider the teaching of the Fathers, especially the Greek Fathers, on the basis of the foundational role for doctrine that tradition recognises in their teaching.7
Having said that, it should be acknowledged that Zizioulas’ theological and philosophical sources are manifold. As far as the theological sources are concerned, there is a strong link with modern Orthodox theology, especially Russian, which came to him directly from Florovsky and indirectly from Christos Yannaras.8 The influence of Fyodor Dostoevsky,
6. For an in-depth exposition, see Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre», ch. 1.
7. Florovsky presented his programmatic line in a paper delivered at the 1936 Athens Congress on Orthodox Theology, fi rst published in H.S. Alivisatos (ed.), Procès-verbaux de premier congrès de théologie orthodoxe à Athènes, 29 Novembre - 6 Décembre 1936 (Athens: Pyrsos, 1939), pp. 238–42, and later as G. Florovskij, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Diakonia 4 (1969), pp. 227–32. It is characterised fi rst of all by what Florovsky calls polemically the ‘Babylonian captivity’ into which Orthodox theology had fallen after the patristic era, that is, the influence of a Western theology of neo-scholastic stamp more attentive to the metaphysical foundation of doctrine than to the contribution of the Fathers (cf. G. Florovsky, Collected Works of Georges Florovsky: Volume 4: Aspects of Church History [Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987], pp. 157–82; and Collected Works of Georges Florovsky: Volume Six: Ways of Russian Theology Part Two [Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987], p. 301).
8. In his writings Zizioulas refers several times to Yannaras (albeit also with critical notes); Yannaras likewise shows a good knowledge of Zizioulas’ thought (cf. N. Russell and C. Yannaras, Metaphysics as a Personal Adventure: Christos Yannaras in Conversation with Norman Russell [Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2017]). Zizioulas is also influenced by the modern Greek Orthodox theology of Nikos Nissiotis and especially of Yannaras, a theology that can be called Greek personalism, as distinct from French personalism, in that it affi rms the ontological primacy of the person. Cf. B. Petrà, ‘Personalist Thought in Greece in the Twentieth Century: A First Tentative Synthesis’, Greek Orthodox Theological
Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov and Vladimir Lossky is strongly present, as can be seen in various ways in the dialectical relationship between the person – identified with freedom – and nature – identified with necessity – and in the attribution of ontological priority to the former.9 On the other hand, Zizioulas rejects the formulation of the person as an absolute ego (typical of idealism) or as an individual (typical of existentialism).
In the philosophical sphere, Zizioulas sees Martin Buber as the modern thinker who has focused most on a relational ontology of the person,10 free from the ontological primacy of nature or the intentionality of consciousness, although the attribution of this primacy to the relation –the between – is a point from which Zizioulas distances himself, proposing instead – in line with his patristic reading – the person. With Michael Theunissen, one can also see the difficulty in determining exactly what meaning Buber gave to the between, making its ontology difficult to assess and understand.11 Zizioulas, rather, sees in Emmanuel Lévinas the one who – again among modern philosophers – has recognised most fully the value of otherness, although not on an ontological level because of his totalitarian vision of ontology, that is, his inability to combine otherness with communion.12
Review 50, nos 1–4 (2005), pp. 1–48; N. Asproulis, ‘Nikos Nissiotis, the “Theology of the ’60s”, and the Personhood: Continuity or Discontinuity?’, in A. Torrance and S. Paschalidis (eds), Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition: Early, Medieval, and Modern Perspectives (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), pp. 161–73; «Τὸ
Synaxē 37 (1991), pp. 11–36, at p. 16.
9. In line with Papanikolaou (cf. A. Papanikolaou, ‘From Sophia to Personhood: The Development of 20th Century Orthodox Trinitarian Theology’, Phronēma 33, no. 2 (2018), pp. 1–20), I argue below that this is attenuated in Zizioulas.
10. Cf. ‘On Being Other: Towards an Ontology of Otherness’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 47.
11. He points out that, according to Buber, the ‘between’ resides neither in the ‘I’ nor in the ‘you’ nor in a third party extraneous to the ‘I’ and the ‘you’, nor in a third party as a unity of the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ (cf. M. Theunissen, The Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Buber [Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986], p. 277).
12. Cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 47–50.
Zizioulas’ Eucharistic Epistemology13
Zizioulas’ epistemology is characterised by a strong eucharistic sense. Th is is because Zizioulas is convinced that trinitarian reflection in the patristic tradition starts from the experience of ecclesial life that is inaugurated by baptism and centred on the Eucharist.14 In line with the eucharistic theology of the eastern Fathers, Zizioulas understands the Eucharist as a synaxis and precisely as an eschatological manifestation of the Kingdom of God.15 From this emerges a conception of knowledge that presents the following connotations: it originates in the prolexis of the ecclesiological-eschatological experience, and therefore is communal; it is founded in the being of the Son, inasmuch as the Church, and with it creation, are incorporated in him; it has as content the knowledge proper to the Son that is knowledge of the Father,16 and therefore of the person, as particularity – ontological reality – established in relation.17 If, for Zizioulas, the reality of divine-human communion makes it possible to speak of ontology and person, it imposes at the same time an apophatic attitude: the person, indicating a unique particularity and
13. For an in-depth exposition, cf. Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre», ch. 2; for a general overview by Zizioulas himself, cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 9–39.
14. Cf. ‘Truth and Communion’, ch. 2 of Being as Communion, pp. 67–122; originally published as ‘Vérité et communion dans la prospective de la pensée patristique grecque’, Irénikon 50 (1977), pp. 451–510 (republished, revised by the author, as ‘Vérité et communion: fondements patristiques et implications existentielles de l’ecclésiologie eucharistique’, in L’être ecclésial [Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981], pp. 57–110).
15. Cf. ‘Ecclesiological Presuppositions of the Holy Eucharist’, in The One and the Many, pp. 61–74, here at p. 62; originally published in Nicolaus 10 (1982), pp. 333–49. His reflections reveal the influence of Alexander Schmemann; cf. A. Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987).
16. The Eucharist is understood as a movement of the return of creation in the Son to the Father. Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 149; the text takes up, with modifications, an unpublished paper presented at King’s College London, under the title ‘The Father as Cause: A Response to Alan Torrance’, London, 1998.
17. Zizioulas notes how in the liturgy of both Basil and Chrysostom the Father is understood as the only truly existing one (cf. «Τὸ
pp. 18, 22).
pertaining to the uncreated sphere although it is also implemented in creation, cannot be defi ned by means of a positive qualitative content.18 In relation to this, one can only identify the elements that describe it, which are hypostaticity, ecstaticity, freedom, causation/causality and the mode of hypostatisation of nature
For Zizioulas, this knowledge must also constantly measure itself against the antinomy of created reality and thought;19 fi nally, due to the fact that it is rooted in the eucharistic synaxis, as mystical experience of the Church par excellence, as manifestation of divine-human communion, it is attested on an experiential-communal, mysticalecclesial level, 20 which reveals the limits of the cognitive possibilities of the logical rationality of the individual and opens up to that ‘visionary language’21 proper to a true and proper ‘eucharistic mysticism’.22
An Outline of the Notion of Personhood: Philosophical Considerations on Human Existence23
Zizioulas’ intra-trinitarian reflection on the Father is conducted at a theological level and, in particular, focuses on the notion of person/ personhood, 24 to which the notions of freedom, causality, communion
18. Cf. ‘On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 99–112, here at p. 112 (fi rst published in C. Schwöbel and C.E. Gunton (eds), Persons, Divine and Human (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991), pp. 33–46).
19. Personal reality is not understandable from our ‘experience of fragmented time’. See ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, in Maspero and Wozniak (eds), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology, p. 202). Cf. I. Hausherr, ‘Ignorance Infinite’, Orientalia Christiana Periodica 2 (1936), pp. 351–62, here p. 357; C. Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, ed. by A. Louth, trans. by H. Ventis (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2005).
20. Cf. ‘The Church as the “Mystical Body” of Christ’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 289–96.
21. Ibid., p. 296.
22. Ibid.
23. For an in-depth exposition, cf. Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre», Introduction.
24. The term ‘personhood’, or ‘personal being’, translates
in L. Siasos [ed.],
and nature are connected.25 However, Zizioulas, who in deference to the Church Fathers to whom he refers – Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus of Lyons, Athanasius, the Cappadocians and Maximus the Confessor –attributes particular importance to the link between the trinitarian mystery and man, shows (without being exhaustive) how even from the philosophical point of view the existentialist matrix of these notions may be enriched by what may be learnt from theological reflection.26 In relation to the problem of human existence, Zizioulas starts by distinguishing two possible philosophical approaches. According to the substantialist approach, man is an individual, i.e. a being considered as
προσώπου [Thessaloniki, 2002], pp. 73–123, here p. 73; originally published in Χαριστήρια
Μελίτωνος [Thessaloniki, 1977], pp. 287–323). The English edition (trans. by N. Russell) renders προσωπικότητα as ‘personhood’ (‘From Mask to Person: The Birth of an Ontology of Personhood’, in Being as Communion, pp. 27–65, here p. 27). The French edition (trans. by A. Tsatsis) uses the more psychological term ‘personnalité’ (‘Du personage à la personne: La notion de la personne et l’hypostase ecclésiale’, in L’être ecclésial , pp. 23–55, here p. 23); the Italian edition (trans. by D. Varasi) renders προσωπικότητα by the more general term ‘dimensione personale’ (‘Dalla maschera alla persona: la nozione di “persona” e l’ipostasi ecclesiale’, in L’essere ecclesiale [Magnano, Biella: Qiqajon, 2007], pp. 23–69, here p. 23.
25. Cf. ‘Appendix: Person and Individual – a “Misreading” of the Cappadocians?’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 171–77.
26. I think I have indicated sufficiently that in Zizioulas there is an existentialist approach, which directs his theological reflection without, however, leading it to clash with dogma (cf. Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre», ch. 1). In this sense, if we distance ourselves from Lucian Turcescu (cf. L. Turcescu, ‘“Person” Versus “Individual”, and Other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa’, Modern Theolog y 18, no. 4 [2002], pp. 527–39), we mitigate Aristotle Papanikolaou’s judgement (cf. A. Papanikolaou, ‘Is John Zizioulas an Existentialist in Disguise? Response to Lucian Turcescu’, Modern Theology 20, no. 4 [2004], pp. 601–7). I recognise, however, with Papanikolaou and Ilarion Alfeev, that in the Fathers there is a certain ‘existentialist’, or rather ‘personalist’, dimension (cf. Papanikolaou, ‘From Sophia to Personhood’, p. 19; I. Alfeev, ‘The Patristic Heritage and Modernity’, paper delivered at the ninth International Conference on Russian monasticism and spirituality, Bose Monastery, Italy, 20 September 2001, translated by H. Bos, at: http://orthodoxeurope.org/ page/11/1/2.aspx (accessed 12 March 2021).
a self-subsistent substance, endowed with a capacity to evaluate, control and dominate reality. According to the personalist approach, man is a person, i.e. a being constituted in relation to another, endowed with a creative capacity, which consists in ontological freedom, i.e. the exercise of the faculty to imprint on created reality a personal, and therefore relational, mode of existence.27 In particular, man is a person in terms of hypostaticity (unique particularity) and ecstaticity (movement of communion towards the other).28 Ecstaticity is then to be understood within a process of personal-causal derivation which ontologically constitutes the person in relation both to the cause and to all other beings possessing the same nature, so that we can speak of the person as a presentation, a mode of being, of nature in its totality, 29 and in this sense a hypostatic fullness. 30 The existence of the person – as an ontological datum, and therefore not dependent on the type of approach – is marked by the necessity of his nature, which is manifested eminently in death, as the disappearance of his being and therefore of freedom (or at least of his possibility of existence).31 Thus, in Zizioulas, we see the affi rmation of the dialectic between person and nature, relative – in theological terms – to this state of creation, the resolution of which –again in theological terms – is the very content of the salvific economy and, even more profoundly, of trinitarian existence.32
27. Th is is the case with art and history; cf. ‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 206–49, here at pp. 215–22, originally published in Scottish Journal of Theology 28, no. 5 (1975), pp. 401–48.
28. Cf. ibid., p. 213.
29. Cf. ibid.
30. Cf. ibid., p. 112.
31. Cf. ibid., p. 227.
32. Cf. ibid., pp. 237–47.
Part One
Zizioulas’ Reading of the Fathers: The Notion of Person and the Doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father
Part One examines the patristic texts from which Zizioulas deduces the foundations of his ontology of the person. Th is is a matter of considerable importance for the understanding of his thought, for in line with Orthodox tradition he grants great authority to the Church Fathers. My examination will attempt to verify the plausibility of Zizioulas’ patristic reading in order in Part Two to go on to identify elements of development in his theological reflection.
Chapter One will focus on the terms: hypostasis, prosōpon, ousia, homoousion, koinōnia kata physin, tropos hyparxeōs, logos physeōs and ekstasis, with reference particularly to Athanasius, the Cappadocians and Maximus the Confessor. We shall see how the thinking of the Cappadocians pushed towards a marked distinction between hypostasis (that which indicates the particular) and ousia (that which indicates the general), and that Zizioulas’ thesis, namely, that the tendency to express ousia in terms of koinōnia kata physin reveals a conception of ousia as ‘communion’, receives support from Colin Gunton, Andrea Milano and Johannes Zachhuber. Moreover, the Cappadocians increasingly focused on the concepts of hypostasis and tropos hyparxeōs, identifying hypostasis with particularity, as the presentation of the one ousia, that which, in Basil of Caesarea’s words, ‘distinguishes and defi nes what is
