Zizioulas on Truth and Communion II

I am afraid that life has continued to be rather disrupted, which has made any serious writing rather difficult, and this will probably continue for a couple of weeks as I’m still catching up on other things. Anyway, I’m posting this rather long summary of part of chapter two of Being as Communion…

John D. Zizioulas. Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London, DLT, 1985 (2004).

Chapter 2. Truth and Communion (67-122)

II. Truth, Being and History: The Greek Patristic Synthesis (72-101)

In this rather substantial section, Zizioulas traces the varying approaches to truth in the Patristic era, focusing particularly on its relationship to history. The challenge for the Fathers was to find a way of expressing the ontological character of truth in a way that did justice to the specific revelation of God in Christ.

1. The “Logos” Approach

This approach, which originated with the apologists and especially with Justin, found “its most audacious representatives” in Clement of Alexandria and Origen. Justin’s view of truth was similar if not identical to that of Platonism, and sees it as “something fixed which establishes its links with the world in and through the mind.” (73) For Justin, “Christ as the logos of God, becomes this very link between truth and the mind, and the truth of philosophy is nothing less than part of this logos.” (74) There is a danger here of a dualism between the senses and the intellect and also, more importantly, of an ontological necessity and monism, but this did not become apparent in Justin.

 

Zizioulas on Truth and Communion I

 I am returning to my reading of Being as Communion, which has unfortunately been rather disrupted of late. I hope that it won’t be too long before I get down to some discussion of his ideas, but it might take a while!

John D. Zizioulas. Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London, DLT, 1985 (2004).

 Chapter 2. Truth and Communion (67-122)

 I. Introduction: The Problem of Truth in the Patristic Era (67-72)

The introduction to this chapter begins by asserting that “Christology is the sole starting point for a Christian understanding of truth.” (67) However what this means is not always apparent and Zizioulas proceeds to examine the challenge that a Christological understanding of truth poses to both Jewish and Greek thought forms.

 For Jews, truth is known in history and becomes identified with the oath of God, which offers security. It is God’s promises that are the ultimate truth and they coincide with the goal or fulfilment of history. “It is in short an eschatological truth which orientates the human spirit towards the future.” (68)

Greek thought, by contrast, seeks truth in a way that transcends history and which is located in the link between being and the perceiving mind. For the Greeks there was a unity between the intelligible world, the thinking mind and being. This unity gave rise to the harmony and beauty of the cosmos, and it is precisely in this unity that truth is to be find. Truth is thus primarily cosmological. This closed ontology of Greek thought found history rather problematical. It had to either explain it by means of some cause or else dismiss it, which ultimately amounted to the same thing.

The New Testament understanding of truth presents a challenge to both Jewish and Greek ideas:

By referring to Christ as the Alpha and Omega of history, the New Testament has transformed radically the linear historicism of Hebrew thought, since in a certain way the end of history in Christ becomes already present here and now. Likewise, in affirming that Christ, i.e. a historical being, is the truth, the New Testament hurls a challenge to Greek thought, since it is in the flow of history and through it, through its changes and ambiguities, that man is called to discover the meaning of existence. (70-71)

The challenge that the early Church had to grapple with, and which Zizioulas discusses in the following section, is how we are to hold “at one and the same time to the historical nature of truth and the presence of ultimate truth here and now.” (71) He suggests that the idea of “communion” was a decisive tool that enabled the Greek Fathers to respond to this challenge.

 

Zizioulas on apophaticism

. . . the apophatic theology of this period [of Dionysius and Maximus the Confessor] by no means implies a theological agnosticism, if carefully studied in its essential aims. The principal object of this theology is to remove the question of truth and knowledge from the domain of Greek theories of ontology in order to situate it within that of love and communion. That apophatic theology founds itself on love is something so evident as to be the necessary key to its understanding and assessment. The perspectives offered by an approach to being through love, as arrived at by the mystical and ascetic theologians of the period, led by another route to the same conclusion that the eucharistic and trinitarian approaches of the previous period reached: it is only through an identification with communion that truth can be reconciled with ontology.

John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London, DLT, 1985 (2004) 92.

 

Zizioulas on Kenosis

‘The beginning of salvation for everyone is to condemn himself’. This axiom, attributed to Nilus of Ancyra, is the very foundation of asceticism for the desert Fathers. The death of ‘self’ is the sine qua non condition for salvation. But this condemnation of the Self does not imply a negative attitude; it is tied up with one’s positive attitude to the Other, with the liberation of the Other from his or her evil qualities, so as to be fully affirmed and accepted. Evil is not ignored or overlooked, but is passed from the Other to the Self. The Other has priority and supremacy over the Self; he must not be judged; he must be stripped of his moral qualities; he must be simply himself and loved for who he is.

A remarkable presentation of this ethos is also to be found in the alloquia of Zosimas, a desert Father of the sixth century. Not only is the evil act of the Other against someone forgiven and eliminated by him, but the Other is regarded as a benefactor for having helped him to blame himself for this evil act.

All this may appear to be totally irrational or, at best, an exercise in the virtue of humility with no ontological foundation or truth for its justification. And yet, if it is carefully analysed, this attitude is found to be based on a firm theological and ontological foundation. The theological justification is Christological: Christ himself made his own the sins of others on the Cross, thus paving the way to self-condemnation so that others might be justified. ‘Christ became a curse for us’ (Gal. 3.13). ‘For our sake he [God] made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God’ (2 Cor. 5.21).

Behind the ethos of self-condemnation for the sake of the Other lies the Christology of kenosis. The application of this theme to the ascetic life was well developed by the late Father Sophrony (Sakharov). The famous saying of his spiritual master, St Silouan the Athonite, ‘keep thy mind in hell and despair not’, inspired Father Sophrony to develop the theology of ascetic kenosis by extending Christ’s ‘descent into hell’ to the point of reducing oneself to nothing so that space may be made for the reception of the Other. Kenosis and its manifestation as self-condemnation are to be seen in their positive significance, as they develop ‘the hypostatic modus agens – the entire giving over of the I to the other, and the same modus patiendi – the receiving of the other in his or her fullness.’ Therefore, self-condemnation has no meaning whatsoever outside an understanding of the Other as having primacy over the Self. Ascetic life aims not at the ‘spiritual development’ of the subject but at the giving up of the Self to the Other, at the erotic ecstasies of the I, that is, at love.

John D. Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness. Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, London, T & T Clark, 2006. 82-84.

 

Being as Communion, chapter one, part two

Here is the rest of chapter one. The summary is once more rather detailed. I don’t know if anyone is interested in these summaries, but I think that this is a useful exercise for me and that posting them here will – hopefully – provide a certain stimulus to keep me writing! However, I have realised that trying to write a response to this now feels too forced. There is much that needs to emerge with time, that needs further reflection and that I hope will become clearer as the book proceeds. So I have decided to simply note a couple of points for further reflection at the end and to come back to these at some point in separate posts. (Although I fear that I shall not have much time for writing in the next couple of weeks).

John D. Zizioulas. Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London, DLT, 1985 (2004).

II From Biological to Ecclesial Existence:
The Ecclesiological Significance of the Person (49-65)

This second part of chapter one is concerned with the ecclesial emergence of the person. Salvation means that we become participators in the Divine Life, precisely because we come to participate in God’s personal existence, for “The goal of salvation is that the personal life which is realized in God should also be realized on the level of human existence. Consequently salvation is identified with the realization of personhood in man.” (50)

Patristic theology was concerned with the person precisely as an “image of God”. It identified two “modes of existence”, namely, the “hypostasis of biological existence” and the “hypostasis of ecclesial existence”.

The hypostasis of biological existence is constituted by conception and birth and as such is the product of communion between two people. Such erotic love is an astounding mystery of existence and conceals a tendency to the ecstatic transcendence of individuality through creation. However, it suffers from two passions, namely ontological necessity because of its tie to natural instinct, and individualism in which the body becomes a new mask. “The body tends towards the person but leads finally to the individual.” (51) Death is the natural development of the biological hypostasis, which can assure the continuation of the species but not of the person.

All this means that man as a biological hypostasis is intrinsically a tragic figure. He is born as a result of an ecstatic fact – erotic love – but this fact is interwoven with a natural necessity and therefore lacks ontological freedom. He is born as a hypostatic fact, as a body, but this fact is interwoven with individuality and with death. By the same erotic act with which he tries to attain ecstasy he is led to individualism. His body is the tragic instrument which leads to communion with others, stretching out a hand, creating language, speech, conversation, art, kissing. But at the same time it is the “mask” of hypocrisy, the fortress of individualism, the vehicle of the final separation, death. “Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death?” (Rom. 7: 24) The tragedy of the biological constitution of man’s hypostasis does not lie in his not being a person because of it; it lies in his tending towards becoming a person through it and failing. Sin is precisely this failure. And sin is the tragic prerogative of the person alone. (52)

 

More on Zizioulas

The scholar discussed in this volume is himself keen to avoid scrutiny. Zizioulas insists that he has done no more than hand on the tradition of the Church, so he cannot be given credit for the theology he sets out. He does not believe that anyone regarded as a theologian could be the originator of their own product. The theologian merely points to what the Church says in the liturgy, for public confession of the source of our freedom is the beginning of theological discourse. Only the worship of the Church which returns thanks to God can say where freedom and truth come from. Without this confession, theology cannot make the first essential admission that, unless we confess the true God, we will continue to labour under many false gods, chief and most burdensome of which is our own selves. Theology that listens to the liturgy will recognise the revolution that is Christian monotheism, and welcome it as release and emancipation, and for this reason all theological work must be self-effacing. Nevertheless, in the contemporary academic scene Zizioulas certainly represents one of the most rigorous expressions of the neglected themes of the Christian faith.

Douglas Knight. ‘Introduction’, The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, edited by Douglas H. Knight, Ashgate, 2007.

If anyone is interested in more on Zizioulas, there is worthwhile material here. And just when I was becoming reconciled to the fact that reading him is going to be a relatively long-term project, he (or rather an editor) has gone and published another book!

 

Being as Communion. Chapter One, part one

It was probably an illusion to think that I was going to be able to produce concise summaries of Zizioulas. Either I have lost my ability to write concisely or else it is impossible to present him concisely, or perhaps a bit of both. In any case, here is the first instalment of chapter one with some very brief comments.

John D. Zizioulas. Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London, DLT, 1985 (2004).

Chapter 1. Personhood and Being (27-65)

This chapter is concerned with the emergence of the concept of the person and its rootedness in theology. Zizioulas argues that the concept of the person “is purely the product of patristic thought. Without this, the deepest meaning of personhood can neither be grasped nor justified.” (27) This chapter is divided into two major sections. The first traces this emergence historically and shows theology’s role in accounting for the person. The second explores the ecclesial grounding of personal identity.

I. From Mask to Person. The birth of an ontology of Personhood.(27-49)

This section traces the development of the concept of the person from Greek thought, where it tentatively raised its head only to be frustrated by the ontological necessity implied by monism, to its emergence in patristic thought where it is intimately related to the working out of Trinitarian theology.

Ancient Greek thought was unable to see human individuality as permanent in any real sense because of its basic principle which sought to trace the multiplicity of existent things back to a unity in the “one” being. This ontological monism meant that not even God could escape this ontological unity.

 

The point of Christology

‘Christology, in the definitive form which the Fathers gave it, looks towards a single goal of purely existential significance, the goal of giving man the assurance that the quest for the person, not as a “mask” or as a “tragic figure,” but as the authentic person, is not mythical or nostalgic but is a historical reality. Jesus Christ does not justify the title of Savior because He brings the world a beautiful revelation, a sublime teaching about the person, but because He realizes in history the very reality of the person and makes it the basis and “hypostasis” of the person for every man.’

John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London, DLT, 1985 (2004) 54.

 

Being as Communion: Introduction

John D. Zizioulas. Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church. London, DLT, 1985 (2004).

 

Introduction (pp. 15-26)

Here we encounter the central themes with which Zizioulas is concerned in this book, namely the ontological nature of ecclesiology, the dialectic between history and eschatology, and the role of the Eucharist in both these themes.

For Zizioulas ecclesiology is not simply one aspect of theology. It assumes a fundamental importance not only for all of theology, but also for our understanding of humanity as such. The Church is a “way of being” which is “deeply bound to the being of man, to the being of the world and to the very being of God.” (15)

The Fathers were not concerned with whether God existed, but rather with how he existed, a question had direct consequences for both the Church and humanity, for both were considered “images of God”. They sought to ground human personhood in a relational ontology that emerged from the eucharistic experience of the early Church. This enabled them to avoid both the monism of Greek philosophy and the “gulf” between God and the world of gnosticism. The being of God is thus a relational being. The Trinity is a primordial ontological concept and not a notion that is added to the divine substance. For the Fathers communion becomes an ontological concept. It is communion that makes things “be”.

 

On reading Zizioulas

Being as Communion by John D. Zizioulas, Metropolitan John of Pergamon, a Greek Orthodox theologian in the ecumenical patriarchate of Constantinople and former professor in Glasgow, is the book that has prompted this blog. It is a book that I have wanted to read for a long time but have somehow never got down to. I remember seeing it in the bookshop at the World Council of Churches’ assembly in Harare (1998), almost buying it, but eventually deciding not to as I was a) almost bankrupt and b) about to be entering a monastery and trying to get rid of things rather than finding ways of transporting them to Europe! It was, I might add, a decision that I later regretted.

In the last couple of years I have become aware of Communion and Otherness, and, after a discussion a few months ago with someone who was reading it, decided that I really wanted to read it. But I also knew that I really ought to read Being as Communion first.

These works are important for all sorts of reasons which I hope may emerge in the course of this reading. For now it is worth noting that Zizioulas is the Orthodox chairperson of the official Catholic-Orthodox dialogue commission in which the theme of ecclesiology is obviously of crucial importance. Although this dialogue has had a rather rocky passage, I believe that it is of crucial importance. Not so much because I expect reunion to happen soon, but rather because of its potential to call us back to the witness and the self-understanding of the undivided Church. For the heritage of the Greek Fathers are also our heritage as western Catholics.

For an interview with Metropolitan Zizioulas published in The Tablet in August 2007, see here.