JOHN D. ZIZIOULAS

ENTITY

HOW

COMMUNICATION

A STUDY ON THE PERSON AND THE CHURCH

With a preface by Archpriest. John Meyendorff

SPbDAiS

St. Petersburg, 2000

JOHN D. ZIZIOULAS

BEING

AS

COMMUNION

STUDIES IN PERSONHOOD AND THE CHURCH

with a foreword by John Meyendorff

ST. VLADIMIR’S SEMINARY PRESS

CHRESTWOOD, NEW YORK 10707

CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction

Chapter I. Personality and Being

Chapter II: Truth and Fellowship

Chapter III: Christ, the Spirit, and the Church

Chapter IV: The Eucharist and Catholicity

Chapter V: Apostolic Continuity and Succession

Chapter VI: Priesthood and Communion

Chapter VII: The Local Church in the Aspect of Communion

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Preface

One of the important and constant aims of the theologian who seeks to express the Orthodox faith as it is reflected in the Orthodox Catholic Tradition is to be able to do justice both to history and to the "systematic" thinking addressed to contemporaries. In most cases, however, historians confine themselves to history, establishing the facts of the past and leaving open the problem of objective truth. Systematic theologians, on the other hand, disregard the strict rules and requirements of historical criticism and use the past as a source of evidence-texts, selecting them in order to prove their own, often controversial, interpretation of the truth.

This dichotomy is especially dangerous for Orthodox theology, which simply ceases to be Orthodox if it either neglects Tradition, which has not been revealed in history, or forgets the truth that is its rational foundation. The present work of John Zizioulas, in my opinion, should be considered important, not only because it clearly transcends the dichotomy mentioned above, but also because it brilliantly shows that Orthodox teaching on man and the Church cannot be divided into carefully separated sections of theological science—"theology," "ecclesiology"—for all of these become meaningless when approached separately. Only together do they reflect the true "mind of Christ" about which St. Paul wrote. Paul, the "true gnosis" defended by St. Irenaeus, and the experiential authentic sense of God to which the Fathers of later centuries called.

Extensive Orthodox theological literature, published in many languages of the Balkans and Eastern Europe, has become much more accessible in English over the past two decades. It includes general introductions to Orthodox history and teaching, some important specialized studies and monographs, and a large number of texts relating to spirituality. In this book, Genesis as Communion, attentive readers will learn how all these scattered elements of Tradition relate to the Gospel itself, how the early Christian community lived by it, and how it is reflected by the great Fathers. They will also see that it transcends the historical framework and is directly related to today's problems.

This book is not always easy to read. It presupposes some degree of understanding of contemporary theological trends. Zizioulas's disciplined and critical mind is in constant dialogue with others, either trusting them or criticizing them, largely on the basis of partiality and one-sidedness, that is, on the basis of their lack of a truly "catholic" understanding of ecclesial reality. His thinking is in many ways close to that of the late Father Nikolai Afanasiev, a well-known defender of the theory of "Eucharistic ecclesiology," but how sharp (and, in my opinion, how justified) is Zizioulas's criticism of Afanasiev! Did Afanasiev not miss the Trinitarian and anthropological aspect of ecclesiology to some extent, focusing his thinking on the "local" nature of the Eucharistic community and excluding to some extent the problems of truth and the universal prerequisites of unity?