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Foundations for John Zizioulas' Approach To FOUNDATIONS FOR JOHN ZIZIOULAS’ APPROACH TO ECCLESIAL COMMUNION John Zizioulas’ work is appealing; he is a sourcier of fresh views on the Church as a communion1. The evaluation of his contributions is prob- lematic. Zizioulas has not presented a synthesis of his contributions2. The topics treated were usually prepared for conferences or theological com- missions. This prompted their publication rather than a clear personal ini- tiative by Zizioulas’ to engage the reader in the development of his ecclesiology and clarify for the reader the consistent theological founda- tions which guide the way he addresses questions. There is a risk of en- gaging the work of Zizioulas without attention to the foundations which shape a particular contribution. This article proposes three foundations which direct the construction of the ecclesiology of John Zizioulas: an ontological, eschatological and epistemological foundation. The ontological foundation is rooted in the difference between creator and creation resulting in the ontological im- portance of salvation. The foundation relative to the eschatological truth in history determines the way salvation is realized in historical and ecclesial events without implicating by this historicity a historical causal- ity. The epistemological foundation establishes the role of ecclesial life for the theological discourse, recognizes the limits of the theological dis- 1. A. DE HALLEUX, Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les pères cappado- ciens?, in RTL 17 (1986) 129-155 and 265-292; reprinted in A. DE HALLEUX, Patrologie et œcuménisme (BETL, 93), Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1990, pp. 215-268; G. BAILLARGEON, Perspectives orthodoxes sur l’Église communion. L’œuvre de Jean Zizioulas, Montréal, Éditions Paulines & Médiaspaul, 1989, 414 p.; J. AREEPLACKAL, Spirit and Ministries. Perspectives of East and West, Bangalore, Dharmaram Publications, 1990, 350 p.; P. MCPARTLAN, The Eucharist Makes the Church. Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, Edinburgh, Clark, 1993, 342 p.; Y. SPITERIS, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, Bologna, Dehoniane, 1992, 486 p.; J. ERICKSON, The Local Churches and Catholicity: an Orthodox Perspective, in Jurist 52 (1992) 490-508; C. AGORAS, Vision ecclésiale et ecclésiologie. À propos d’une lecture de l’œuvre de Jean Zizioulas, in Con- tacts 43 (1991) 106-123; C. AGORAS, L’anthropologie théologique de Jean Zizioulas. Un bref aperçu, in Contacts 41 (1989) 6-23; C. AGORAS, Hellénisme et christianisme: la ques- tion de l’histoire, de la personne et de sa liberté selon Jean Zizioulas, in Contacts 44 (1992) 244-269; J. FONTBONA I MISSÉ, Comunión y Sinodalidad. La eclesiología euca- rística despues de N. Afanasiev en I. Zizioulas y J. M. R. Tillard (Sant Paciá, 52), Barce- lona, Edicions de la Facultat de Teologia de Catalunya – Herder, 1994, 534 p.; M. VOLF, After Our Likeness. The Church as the Image of the Trinity, Grand Rapids, MI – Cam- bridge, Eerdmans, 1998, 314 p. 2. J. ZIZIOULAS, L’être ecclésial (Perspective orthodoxe, 3), Genève, Labor et Fides, 1981, p. 19. Zizioulas reminds the reader that this is a collection of essays and not a syn- thesis. J. ZIZIOULAS' APPROACH TO ECCLESIAL COMMUNION 439 course and yet the obligation to articulate the good news of salvation in Jesus Christ. I. ONTOLOGY OF CREATOR AND CREATION Zizioulas begins the introduction to his collection of articles, Being as Communion, with this thesis which underlies his work: “The Church is not simply an institution. She is a “mode of existence”, a way of being. The mystery of the Church, even in its institutional dimension, is deeply bound to the being of man, to the being of the world and to the very being of God”3. His ontological perspective is principally soteriological not philosophi- cal. What is Zizioulas’ notion of salvation? “The eternal survival of the person as a unique, unrepeatable and free “hypostasis”, as loving and be- ing loved, constitutes the quintessence of salvation, the bringing of the Gospel to man”4. Salvation is not first of all a response to personal sin but rather a response to death5. Even when it is embraced as a noble self- sacrifice or accepted according to the laws of nature, it is not acceptable to humanity6. The central task of fundamental theology is to show how dogmas are tied to existence in a decisive manner7. This ontological per- spective for his understanding of salvation requires establishing the free- dom of being from non-being. Zizioulas undertakes this challenge in re- gard to divine being and in regard to created being. Death is the essential issue for fundamental theology8 and requires addressing non-being, the experience of death in human life, by establishing divine being’s capacity to offer salvation to created being. Zizioulas bases his approach to ontol- ogy on three premises: a) true being’s freedom from necessity; b) being as a communion of persons; and c) the person as cause of being. These premises are fundamental to his understanding of being, whether divine or created. Christianity expressed its faith in a world with established cosmol- ogies. Whether Platonic or Aristotelian, Greek cosmology was fundamen- tally a monistic ontology. “Not even God can escape from this ontologi- cal unity and stand freely before the world, “face to face” in dialogue with it. He too is bound by ontological necessity to the world and the 3. J. ZIZIOULAS, Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and in the Church (Con- temporary Greek Theologians, 4), Crestwood, St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985, p. 15. This is the same introduction which is found in ZIZIOULAS, L’être ecclésial. 4. J. ZIZIOULAS, Personhood and Being, in Being as Communion, pp. 49-50. 5. Because created being cannot assure its own existence, it is mortal. Sin does not cause mortality but rather the experience of death. 6. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Explora- tion of Personhood, in Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (1975), p. 422. 7. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Christologie et existence. La dialectique créé-incréé et le dogme de Chalcédoine, (tr. M. STAVROS), in Contacts 36 (1984), p. 154. 8. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Truth and Communion, in Being as Communion, p. 103. 440 R.D. TURNER world to him…”9. A monistic approach eliminates true freedom for God because there is no separation in an absolute sense between divine being and the cosmos. Creation is meant to express this distinction by establish- ing a beginning, in an absolute sense, for being which is not divine. With- out a beginning, there is no real possibility for the non existence of cre- ated being and therefore, the being of God is confronted with a necessary relation to non-divine reality. The Old Testament understanding of crea- tion separated divine being from the being of creation. The notion of creation ex nihilo expressed otherness by separating the being of God from the being of the world. The being of creation is only the result of God’s will. God is not obliged to create the world in order to be God nor is the act of creation simply the act of ordering already existing being. God’s freedom in relation to the world is unconditional. The act of crea- tion by God in a monistic view of being is an aesthetic act that has no ontological significance. The purpose is to attain beauty by the ordering of preexistent matter. In the Christian view of creation God creates be- cause “…il veut qu’existe quelque chose d’autre en dehors de Lui, ‘quelque chose’ avec quoi s’entretenir et s’unir”10. Creation has ontologi- cal significance, not simply aesthetic significance, because the divine act of creation brings the world into existence. For God to be free requires not only freedom from the world but free- dom within divine being. Freedom within divine being is based on two things: the ontological significance of divine persons and the Father as the cause of divine personhood. The doctrine of creation ex nihilo alone fails to achieve the goal of maintaining the freedom of God. The Old Tes- tament tradition of creation and the New Testament experience of the di- vine persons are two keys to surpassing necessity in divine being. Ac- cording to Zizioulas, the view of person “…was born historically from the endeavor of the Church to give ontological expression to its faith in the Triune God”11. The revelation of the divine persons is fundamental to our understanding of the freedom of God because the personhood of God, by being constitutive of divine being, establishes freedom within divine being. The personhood of God could be understood as a secondary character- istic of God, the divine essence or substance being primary. Zizioulas rejects this approach: “…unless we admit on a philosophical level that personhood is not secondary to being, that the mode of existence of being is not secondary to its ‘substance’ but itself primary and constitu- tive of it, it is impossible to make sense of the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo”12. The question is “…whether otherness can make sense in ontol- ogy, whether ontology can do anything more than rest on the idea of 9. Personhood and Being, pp. 29-30. 10. Christologie et existence, p. 157. 11. Personhood and Being, p. 36. 12. Human Capacity, p. 416. J. ZIZIOULAS' APPROACH TO ECCLESIAL COMMUNION 441 totality”13. In order to protect the freedom of God, Zizioulas develops an understanding of the person with ontological content which conditions the discourse on the unity of divine being. By giving priority to divine person, Zizioulas establishes the freedom of divine being. The particular- ity or otherness of the person is not added to being; rather it causes the being to exist and is therefore, the point at which being can truly be treated.
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