Foundations for John Zizioulas' approach to ecclesial communion

Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses

Volumn 78, Issue 4, 2002, Pages 438-465

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EID: 61449528583     PISSN: 00139513     EISSN: 17831423     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2143/etl.78.4.600     Document Type: Article

References (68)

1. A. DE HALLEUX, Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les pères cappadociens?, in RTL 17 (1986) 129-155 and 265-292;
2. reprinted in A. DE HALLEUX, Patrologie et œcuménisme (BETL, 93), Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1990, pp. 215-268;
3. G. BAILLARGEON, Perspectives orthodoxes sur l'Église communion. L'œuvre de Jean Zizioulas, Montréal, Éditions Paulines & Médiaspaul, 1989, 414 p.;
4. J. AREEPLACKAL, Spirit and Ministries. Perspectives of East and West, Bangalore, Dharmaram Publications, 1990, 350 p.;
5. P. MCPARTLAN, The Eucharist Makes the Church. Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue, Edinburgh, Clark, 1993, 342 p.;
6. Y. SPITERIS, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, Bologna, Dehoniane, 1992, 486 p.;
7. J. ERICKSON, The Local Churches and Catholicity: an Orthodox Perspective, in Jurist 52 (1992) 490-508;
8. C. AGORAS, Vision ecclésiale et ecclésiologie. À propos d'une lecture de l'œuvre de Jean Zizioulas, in Contacts 43 (1991) 106-123;
9. C. AGORAS, L'anthropologie théologique de Jean Zizioulas. Un bref aperçu, in Contacts 41 (1989) 6-23;
10. C. AGORAS, Hellénisme et christianisme: la question de l'histoire, de la personne et de sa liberté selon Jean Zizioulas, in Contacts 44 (1992) 244-269;
11. J. FONTBONA I MISSÉ, Comunión y Sinodalidad. La eclesiologia eucaristica despues de N. Afanasiev en I. Zizioulas y J. M. R. Tillard (Sant Paciá, 52), Barcelona, Edicions de la Facultat de Teologia de Catalunya - Herder, 1994, 534 p.;
12. M. VOLF, After Our Likeness. The Church as the Image of the Trinity, Grand Rapids, MI - Cambridge, Eerdmans, 1998, 314 p.
13. 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 synthesis.
14. J. ZIZIOULAS, Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and in the Church (Contemporary Greek Theologians, 4), Crestwood, St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985, p. 15.
15. This is the same introduction which is found in ZIZIOULAS, L'être ecclésial.
16. J. ZIZIOULAS, Personhood and Being, in Being as Communion, pp. 49-50.
17. Because created being cannot assure its own existence, it is mortal. Sin does not cause mortality but rather the experience of death.
18. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood, in Scottish Journal of Theology 28 (1975), p. 422.
19. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Christologie et existence. La dialectique créé-incréé et le dogme de Chalcédoine
20. (tr. M. STAVROS), in Contacts 36 (1984), p. 154.
21. Personhood and Being, pp. 29-30.
22. Christologie et existence, p. 157.
23. Human Capacity, p. 416.
24. Truth and Communion, p. 86.
25. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood, in C. SCHWÖBEL and C. GUNTON (eds), Persons, Divine and Human, Edinburgh, Clark, 1991, pp. 37-38.
26. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Presening God's Creation (Part II), in Sourozh 40 (1989), p. 40.
27. Cf. Presening, II, p. 37.
28. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Preserving God's Creation (Part III), in Sourozh 41 (1990), p. 35.
29. With his ontological perspective and his resistance to ethics eclipsing the place of ontology, the challenge for Zizioulas is how the human person has an awareness of his role in creation or an awareness of his relation to God. He suggests that in a view of creation in which life forms evolve, the Fall does not introduce mortality into creation. Rather, creation has awaited the advent of man for its freedom from mortality. With the Fall, death which has marked creation, claims man, the one awaited to save creation from mortality. Cf. Preserving, III (n. 27), p. 37-38.
30. Zizioulas' quotation of Darwin, C. DARWIN, The Descent of Man, Vol. I, 1898, p. 193.
31. Cf. On Being a Person (n. 20), p. 43.
32. Cf. Personhood as Being, p. 54.
33. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, The Mystery of the Church in Orthodox Tradition, in One in Christ 24 (1988), p. 296.
34. Cf. Being as Communion, p. 20.
35. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, The Eucharistic Prayer and life, in Emmanuel 81 (1975), p. 470.
36. J. ZIZIOULAS, Déplacement de la perspective eschalologique, in G. ALBERIGO et al. (eds.), La chrétienté en débat: histoires, formes et problèmes actuels (Théologies), Paris, Cerf, 1984, p. 100.
37. Cf. ZIZIOULAS, Implications ecclésiologiques (n. 57), p. 147, note 23. The separation of human acts and history from the history of nature is the consequence of separating mankind and nature. The human person and the cosmos are bound together and share the same space and time. Together they are God's creation. The understanding of the union of mankind and creation has been so diminished that they have been treated as if they each had a separate history.
38. In Protestant tradition other means continue to relate the truth realized in Christ to christian life throughout history, "...the role of the icon has been transferred in Protestantism to other means, namely to word and action. And the problems begin at this point. Verbal descriptions or indications or pointers to the kingdom, i.e. to eschatological realities, are necessarily bound and conditioned by history. Dogmas, like scriptures, presented the same problem in the eastern patristic tradition, and this gave rise to apophatic theology as a way out of the difficulty, but apophaticism runs the risk of dichotomizing between history and eschatology and should be handled with great care" (Communion and Truth, p. 99).
39. J. ZIZIOULAS, Les groupes informels dans l'Église. Un point de vue orthodoxe, in R. METZ AND J. SCHLICK (eds.), Les groupes informels dans l'Église (Hommes et Église, 2), Geneva, C.E.R.D.I.C, 1971, p. 265.
40. When Zizioulas spoke about informal groups in the Church he used the verb incarnate to distinguish between oriental monasticism and the episcopal centered Church. "Mais cet effort ne pouvait pas incarner ce qu'incarne l'Église en tant que communauté eschatologique dans l'histoire par sa synaxe eucharistique" (Les groupes informels, p. 267).
41. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Eschatology and History, in T. WISER (ed.), Wither Ecumenism?, Geneva, W.C.C., 1986, p. 35.
42. Eschatology and History, p. 36.
43. He rejects the priority of pneumatology he finds in Khomiakov and Lossky as well as that of Nissiotis and Bobrinskoy. Although they stress that the Holy Spirit and Christ belong together not separated, their syntheses give priority to the Holy Spirit (cf. Christ, the Spirit, pp. 125-126).
44. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, The Pneumatological Dimension of the Church, in International Catholic Review Communio 1 (1974), p. 147.
45. J. ZIZIOULAS, The Eucharist and the Kingdom of God (Part III), in Sourozh 60 (1995), pp. 43-44.
46. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, Communion and Otherness, in Sobornost 16 (1994), p. 14.
47. I will include three of the examples of Zizioulas' reference to kenosis: "...asceticism was accompanied in the Early Church by the breaking of one's selfish will so that the individual with his of [sic] her desires to dominate the external world and use it for their own satisfaction may learn not to make the individual the centre of creation" (Preserving.. II [n. 24], p. 11).
48. "Mais sur cette terre, cette victoire [du Christ sur le diable] ne sera jamais qu'une victoire de la 'kenose' et la victoire de la croix, la victoire de l'ascèse héroïque, telle que l'a comprise et vécue l'Orient dans le monachisme" (J. ZIZIOULAS, La vision eucharistique du monde et l'homme contemporain, in Contacts 19 [1967], p. 91).
49. "The eucharistic community constitutes a sign of the fact that the eschaton can only break through history but never be identified with it. Its call to catholicity is a call not to progressive conquest of the world but to a 'kenotic' experience of the fight with the anticatholic demonic powers and a continuous dependence upon the Lord and His Spirit" (J. ZIZIOULAS, Eucharist and Catholicity, in Being as Communion..., p. 161).
50. st Comment, [Response to: Communal Spirit and Conciliarity by Prof. Zabolotsky], in S.C. AGOURIDÈS (ed.), Procès-verbaux du deuxième congrès de théologie orthodoxe, Athens, 1978, p. 145.
51. The Eucharistic Prayer (n. 60), p. 470.
52. Cf. Déplacement (n. 61), pp. 97-98.
53. Cf. Les groupes informels (n. 74), p. 266.
54. Procès-verbaux (n. 87), p. 143.
55. Zizioulas turns to the experience of fallen existence as the key to his understanding of communion being displaced as the fundamental context for knowing. His presupposition is that without the Fall, mankind's relation to the world was one of communion not isolation. Does the "Fall" adequately account for knowledge by isolation. One question that could be raised about Zizioulas perspective is found in W. ONG, Fighting for Life. Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness, Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1981, 231 p. Ong explores the effect of gender difference on the development of human consciousness. Ong's study suggests that gender plays a role in basic differences of approach for understanding the world in relation to the person. Difference of gender is not attributed to the fallen condition.
56. Cf. Hitman Capacity, p. 405.
57. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, The Ecumenical Dimensions of Orthodox Theological Education, in Orthodox Theological Education for the Life and Witness of the Church, Geneva, W.C.C., 1978, pp. 37-38. Zizioulas is interested in dialogue between theology and other disciplines. This is expressed particularly in regard to the environment.
58. J. ZIZIOULAS, The Early Christian Community, in B. MCGINN - J. MEYENDORFF - J. LECLERCQ (eds.), Christian Spirituality: Origins to the Twelfth Century (World Spirituality, 16), London, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, p. 38.
59. Cf. The Early Christian, p. 37.
60. Cf. Procès-verbaux (n. 87), p. 141.
61. Cf. DE HALLEUX, Personnalisme ou essentialisme (n. 1), p. 237ff.
62. nd Ecumenical Council on the Holy Spirit in Historical and Ecumenical Perspective, in Credo in Spiritum Sanctum (Teologia e filosofia, 6), Rome, Liberia Editrice Vaticana, 1983, Vol. I, p. 52. Zizioulas criticizes Rahner and Barth on their focus on revelation alone. For Zizioulas, this is inadequate because it does not address the importance of the discourse on God in himself. The revelation of God in Jesus calls for a renewed understanding of God apart from his acts in history.
63. nd, p. 40.
64. Cf. Implications ecclésiologiques (n. 57), p. 152, note 29.
65. Cf. J. ZIZIOULAS, The Eucharist and the Kingdom of God (Part I), in Sourozh 58 (1995), pp. 7-8.
66. Cf. N. HEALY, Communion Ecclesiology. A Cautionary Note, in Pro Ecclesia 4 (1995), pp. 49-450.
67. Cf. D. DOYLE, Möhler, Schleiermacher and the Roots of Communion Ecclesiology, in TS 51 (1992), pp. 467-480;
68. P.C. BORI, ΚΟΙΝΩΝΙΑ. L'idea delta comunione nell'ecclesiologia récente e nel Nuovo Testamento, Brescia, Paideia, 1972, pp. 1-131.