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2014

A critical study on Zizioulas' ontology of personhood

Tingcui Jiang
Hong Kong Baptist University

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 A Critical Study on Zizioulas’

Ontology of Personhood

JIANG Tingcui

A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

Principal Supervisor: Prof. Kwan Kai Man

Hong Kong Baptist University

October 2014
 DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis represents my own work which has been done
after registration for the degree of PhD at Hong Kong Baptist University, and has not
been previously included in a thesis, dissertation submitted to this or other institution
for a degree, diploma or other qualification.

Signature:_________________

Date: October 2014

i
 ABSTRACT

This research is about a theological ontology which is based on Zizioulas’

ontology of personhood. His ontological thought is manifested by a renewed view of
God and the human person. Therefore, this thesis includes three parts. The first part
examines the being of God as personhood. The second part examines the being of the
human person as personhood. The third part analyzes and criticizes Zizioulas’
ontology of personhood.

In Part I, I explore the background and source of Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood in the Cappadocian Trinitarian theology. Zizioulas claims that there has
been an ontological revolution against Greek substantialism: based on the
identification of hypostasis with personhood rather than ousia; the ontological
principle of God is traced back to the person (hypostasis). It means that God first is
God the Father rather than his substance or nature. This is a reversal of a view which
has prevailed in Western theology. The Father is the personal cause of the generation
of the Son and of the procession of the Spirit. One of the significances of the Father
as personal cause is that the personal Father generates personal otherness in the
divine being. Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood is based on the concepts of
communion and otherness. He excludes essence or ousia from his ontological
categories.

In Part II, I will explore the being of man as personhood. The Father as personal
cause bequeaths us an ontology of personhood which also provides the metaphysical
ground for the being of human persons. Personhood rather than human nature is the
centre of anthropology. The mode of existence of the Trinity is the foundation for the
transformation of human existence from a biological hypostasis to an ecclesial
hypostasis. Personal otherness is constitutive of human person. Otherness as an
ontological existence transforms the relationship between human beings in
communion. The coexistence of otherness and communion in a Trinitarian model
provides a foundation for the criticisms of Levinas’ concept of otherness without
communion.

In Part III, I will criticize the Western views of God and person, but also analyze
and criticize Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood. The significance of the ontology of
personhood is shown by its providing an insightful and radical critique of the
substantialist Trinitarian theology which understands One God as substance foremost.
At the same time, it provides strong criticisms of individualist understanding of the
concept of personhood.

I conclude that Zizioulas has reconstructed a new theological ontology and a

new systematic theology which are significantly different from our customary
thinking of theology. But because of his overlooking of the views of sin and justice in
the ontological sense, I also criticize Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood for its lack of
a critical reflection on the society.

ii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Above all, I would like to thank my family, the pastor, sisters and brothers from
church for their encouragement and support which are the sources of my strength and
confidence to sustain my study and research in the past few years especially when my
health was not in good condition. Without their prayers and care I would not have
survived those tough days.

My special appreciation and thanks go to my principal supervisor, Prof. Kwan Kai

Man, who has guided me along the way with his tremendous patience and
outstanding academic vision. I would like to thank him for correcting my bias and
stubbornness and spending lots of time mentoring me in writing the dissertation. I
would like to thank Dr. Richard Lee, my co-supervisor, for his academic guidance
and patient instruction. I would also like to thank Dr. Chan Sze Chi, for his spending
a lot of time to help me improve my dissertation including correcting the grammar
mistakes. My thanks also go to other teachers from the Department of Religion and
Philosophy for their encouragement and support.

Last, but by no means least, I specially thank my friends in mainland China—

Wang Chengjun, Li Meilin, Baihong etc. They are all university teachers from
Department of Philosophy, and their particular research on religious philosophy has
inspired me a lot.

iii
 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Declaration i
Abstract ii
Acknowledgments iii
Table of Contents iv

Introduction 1

Part I The Being of God as Personhood, or Persons-in-Communion 21

Chapter One The background and source of the ontology of personhood 22

1.1 The influence of Greek substantialism on the idea of One God 23

1.2 Problem of the ‘Person’ in the Trinitarian formula 25

1.2.1 Western Sabellianism in Trinitarian theology 27
1.2.2 Eastern Tritheism 27
1.2.3 Arianism and Eunomianism 28

1.3 Reasons underlying the problem of the Trinitarian formulation 31

1.3.1 The Logos approach to the idea of truth 32
1.3.2 ‘Persona’, ‘Prosopon’ and ‘hypostasis’ in Grace-Roman thought 36

1.4 A new idea of truth and an ontological revolution 38

1.4.1 A new idea of truth: the identification of truth with life 38
1.4.2 The Ontological revolution initiated by Athanasius 41
1.4.3 The Cappadocian Fathers continuing the ontological revolution 44

1.5 The influence of the ontological revolution on the Second Ecumenical

Council and later Christological debate 47
1.5.1 Its influence on the Creed of Constantinople 47
1.5.2 Its influence on Chalcedonian Christology 49

iv
Chapter Two Analysis of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood 51

2.1 The meaning of the being of God as person 51

2.1.1 The being of God as person answering the question of ‘how God is’ 51
2.1.2 The being of God as person giving rise to otherness and communion 53

2.2 Further analysis of Zizioulas’ ontological concept of personhood 56

2.2.1 Has Zizioulas misunderstood the Cappadocian concept of divine 56

person?
2.2.2 Zizioulas’ understanding of the concept of person vis-à-vis the
59
Cappadocian Fathers
2.2.3 A different Trinitarian formula from the Cappadocian Fathers 62

2.3 Further Ontological Implications of Zizioulas’ unique understanding

of person as the ultimate ontological category - Taking seriously ‘the
Father as cause’ 65

2.3.1 Monas refer to the Father ontologically 65

2.3.2 Stressing person to the extent of excluding ousia 67

2.3.3 Causality in Trinity transcending Greek cosmology 68

2.3.4 Person, relationality or communion as central ontological categories 69

of the Trinity
2.3.5 Rendering communion primordial not in conflict with the
70
ontological ultimacy of the Father
2.3.6 Personal ordering in the immanent Trinity not a substantial
71
Subordinationism
2.3.7 Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood transcending necessity to bring
74
about freedom
2.4 Preliminary evaluation of Zizioulas’ ontological proposal 75
2.4.1 Criticisms of the monarchia of the Father as cause 76

2.4.2 Criticism of Zizioulas’ ontology – Alexandrian ontology of

78
relationality versus Cappadocian ontology of relationality
2.4.3 Evaluation of a part of discussion: further analysis of the true
82
Cappadocian intention
2.4.4 Defense of the Father as cause- Calvin and others 85

v
Part II From God’s Person to Human Person 89

Chapter Three The person of the Father as the ontological ground for
the personhood of human beings 90

3.1 The ontological meaning of personhood 90

3.1.1 Ekstais and hypostasis as two basic aspects of personhood 91
3.1.2 Three characteristics of the concept of personhood 93

3.2 The being of God as the ontological ground for the being of man 95

3.2.1 The Father as personal cause for personal existence 95

3.2.2 Christ is the way to personal existence 96

3.3 From biological to ecclesial hypostasis 98

3.3.1 The ontology of communion as a standard to distinguish two modes

of existence 99
3.3.2 Biological hypostasis 101
3.3.2.1 The emergence of biological hypostasis 101
3.3.2.2 Death as an ontological problem for biological hypostasis 102
3.3.3 The ecclesial hypostasis 104
3.3.3.1 The emergence of a new particular hypostasis through Baptism 104
3.3.3.2 Eucharistic hypostasis as a relational expression between
biological and ecclesial hypostasis 107

Chapter Four Personal communion and otherness 110

4.1 Personal otherness for the being of human person 110

4.1.1 The basic meaning of otherness: uniqueness and relationship 110

4.1.2 Otherness as constitutive of human person 112
4.1.3 Otherness beyond the conflict between the particular/person and the
general/ nature 113
4.1.4 Otherness decides the end of ecclesial existence 115

vi
4.2 Personal communion in otherness 117

4.3 Transformation of the relationship with the Other 120

4.3.1 Negligence of the Other 121
4.3.2 The self prior to the Other 122
4.3.3 An impersonal relationship 123
4.3.4 The necessity of renewing the understanding of personhood in
theology 124
4.3.5 A personal relationship 127

4.4 Critique of Levinas’ concept of otherness without communion 131

4.4.1 The ‘otherness’ as metaphysical desire in the thought of Levinas 133
4.4.2 An ethical relationship among humans without communion 134
4.4.3 A kind of communion not threatening otherness 136
4.4.4 A personal Christology breaking down totality 138
4.4.5 A Trinitarian model for the coexistence of otherness and communion 140

Part III Critical Assessment of Zizioulas’ Ontology of Personhood 142

Chapter Five Critique of Substantialist view of God from the

perspective of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood 143

5.1 Western substantialist view of God 144

5.1.1 Augustine: God as absolute being 144
5.1.2 Boethius: one ousia and three substances 147
5.1.3 Thomas Aquinas: God as the subsistent being 148

5.2 Critique from the perspective of the ontology of personhood 149

5.2.1 Separation of oikonomia and theologia in Western substantialist
approach to Trinity 150
5.2.2 Divergence between East and West in dealing with oikonomia and
theologia 152
5.2.3 Substantialist approach causing the problem of Filioque 155

vii
 5.2.4 Zizioulas’ reiteration of the Cappadocian notion of the Son’s
mediation in the procession of the Spirit 157
5.2.5 Substantialism dictates that unity precedes diversity logically or
ontologically in God 160

5.3 Theological and philosophical significance of the ontology of

personhood 165

Chapter six Critique of Western concept of personhood from the

perspective of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood
168

6.1 The concept of person in Western anthropology 168

6.1.1 Augustine: person as consciousness 168
6.1.2 Boethius: person as individual and rational substance 170
6.1.3 Thomas Aquinas: person as a subsistent individual 171

6.2 Criticism from the angle of the ontology of personhood 173

6.2.1 Individualism in the concept of personhood: there is no otherness and
communion 173
6.2.2 Relationship between God and human as an impersonal union 179
6.2.3 The problem of man as a moral issue rather than ontological one 183

6.3 Analysis of Zizioulas’ criticisms 188

Chapter Seven Contributions and criticisms of Zizioulas’

ontology of personhood 195

7.1 Contributions of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood 195

7.1.1 Reconstructing a theological ontology as a new approach to
theological study 196
7.1.2 A personal knowledge or epistemology for Christianity 197
7.1.3 Salvation concerning foremost hypostasis rather than human nature 205

viii
7.2 Criticisms and defenses of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood 207

7.2.1 Is Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood philosophical rather than

theological? 207
7.2.2 Defenses of Zizioulas’ personal ontology 210

7.3 My criticism: lack of proper doctrines of justice and sin in Zizioulas’

ontology of personhood 212
7.3.1 Sin only as an ethical concept for Zizioulas 213
7.3.2 Sin as an ontological problem and a relational concept 214
7.3.3 Divine-human communion lacking the idea of justice 217
7.3.4 Detachment from the injustice of reality 221

Conclusion 225

Bibliography 229

Curriculum Vitae 241

ix
 Introduction
John Zizioulas (1931-) is a famous contemporary theologian from the Eastern

Orthodox tradition. He adopts a theological approach which is markedly different

from the traditional Western substantialist approach. I will call this approach in this

thesis “the ontology of personhood.” It provides a new understanding of the

concept of personhood in terms of the Cappadocian Trinitarian theology. Zizioulas

also constructs an anthropology based on the ontology of personhood. Before going

into the details, I will first introduce the overall shape of my research in the

following sections.

1. A personalist approach to theological study1

Christianity is based on an account of events that happened in the first century of

our era. The Christian gospel consists of an account of how God saved man, and

before that gospel can be understood something must be known about God and

about man. What kind of God would the Christian God be? How can we understand

the being of God and the being of His creature man or the individual human

person? 2 Before the gospel can be received, certain presuppositions must be

accepted. These presuppositions are ontological.

Each research also has its presuppositions, its basic concepts and its direction. It

means that there can be different preliminary understandings of the being of the

entities into which the inquiry is being made. Therefore, there is a necessity for an

inquiry into the ontological presuppositions of theology. For example, John

1
Zizioulas calls his theology a personalist approach which is contrasted with a substantialist
approach: “this may explain why theology in the West, with the help of St Augustine’s decisive
influence, has developed a substantialist rather than a personalist approach to Trinitarian theology.”
See John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed.
Paul McPartlan (London: T&T Clark, 2006), 124.
2
In this thesis, I often use “man” to denote the human species for convenience’s sake. It, of course,
does not mean that I accept the superiority of males over females.
1
Macquarrie writes: “Is the being of man, for instance, already conceived as

substance? Or is it conceived existentially? Or in some other way? Whatever the

presupposition – and there must be some presupposition, even if it is not explicit – it

will influence both the inquiry and its result.”3

Based on a theological approach we used to call substantialism or substantialist

theology, traditional Western theology formed the knowledge of the being of God

and human. For example, from Justin Martyr to Augustine, the early theologians

drew freely on Greek sources, especially Plato, for their theological work.4 Thomas

Aquinas made use of the philosophy of Aristotle in his exposition of the Christian

faith. His scholastic theology took theological speculation to a whole new level.

The knowledge of God and the knowledge of man he thus arrived at became the

very basis of his scholastic theology.5

Influenced by Heidegger’s existentialism, Bultmann proceeds to interpret the

being of man existentially in his exposition of the entire Pauline theology as a

theological anthropology or doctrine of man.6 These presuppositions are clarified

by a philosophy of being, and an inquiry into the idea of being becomes his

theological assumption, from which his theology sets out to make inquiries. With a

typical existential approach, Bultmann’s theology centers on the question of man’s

existence. It is a fundamental presupposition for Bultmann’s views on

demythologizing. It constitutes a new understanding of man and God. Bultmann

3
John Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1973), 6.
4
For example, Justin Martyr, Dialogue with trypho. See http://earlychristianwritings.
Com/text/justinmartyr-dialoguetrypho.html. Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, O. P.
(Brookly, N. Y.: New City Press, 1991).
5
Scholastic thought is known for rigorous conceptual analysis and the careful drawing of
distinctions. Scholasticism was the movement based on Aristotle but developed beyond Aristotle. It
is incorporated into Christianity and throughout Christendom. Scholasticism places a strong
emphasis on dialectical reasoning to extend knowledge by inference, and to resolve contradictions.
For example, Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica.
6
Rudolf K. Bultmann, New Testament and Mythology and Other Basic Writings, ed. and trans. S. M.
Ogden (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984).
2
develops a theological hermeneutic on the basis of this new understanding.

Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood is a different approach to theology. The being

of God and the being of human are not conceived as substances but in an alternative

way as persons-in-communion. Zizioulas rejects modern individualist and

substantialist notions of personhood and emphasizes a relational understanding of

the person. He uses the term ‘person’ in an uncustomary sense in accordance with

the Greek Fathers’ language. ‘Personhood,’ in contrast with the concept of

‘substance,’ is a concept which stresses the communion with God. However,

although Zizioulas emphasizes the personal mode of existence of human being, it is

different from Bultmann’s existentialist theology which approaches the source of

truth out of an existentialist understanding of the human situation. Centering on

ontology, Zizioulas’ human being mainly focuses on his personal mode of being in

communion with God. The most important result is that the theological concept of

person is drawn from the Person of the Father who is the cause of the personal

divine existence. The concept is quite different from that of philosophy. I will

distinguish them in chapter seven. The ontology of personhood provides a

personalist perspective for Christian theology. In some sense, it overcomes the

limitation of Western theology which is heavily confined to an individualist

perspective.

2. The meaning of key terms in Zizioulas’ works

Person mainly refers to the persons of Trinity. Personhood has been mainly
7
applied to anthropology. But sometimes, Person and personhood are

7
Zizioulas writes: “It is a presence that seems to come to us from outside this world—which makes
the notion of person, if properly understood, perhaps the only notion that can be applied to God
without the danger of anthropomorphism…Personhood thus proves to be in this world—through
man—but not of this world.” See John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 141, footnote 84.
3
interchangeable in Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology. 8 In my thesis, I distinguish

person from personhood in Trinitarian theology and anthropology. The meaning of

personhood is a relational and ontological category which does not mean an

individualistic rational being understood in terms of a being-in-itself or

being-by-itself. Zizioulas’ concept of person in the doctrine of the Trinity stresses

the relational character of personhood over and against the reduction of personhood

to individual self-consciousness. Zizioulas describes the concept of personhood in

terms of two terms: ekstasis and hypostasis. The term ekstasis means a movement

towards communion. Hypostasis means the particular being. Hypostasis signifies

that in and through his communion a personhood affirms his own identity and his

particularity. Hypostasis ‘supports his own nature’ in a particular and unique way.

The notion of hypostasis is identical with personhood rather than substance since it

is conceived in a non-substantialist relational way. It brings about an ontological

revolution which is the foundation of Zizioulas’ theology.

Communion and otherness are two aspects of the concept of person. The Father

as personal cause generates personal otherness and communion. Zizioulas explains

communion by a liturgical or sacramental approach,9 especially the Eucharistic

approach. The Eucharistic experience implies that life is imparted and actualized

only in an event of communion. It leads to a conclusion which is the identification

of being and life with communion to the ultimate origin of existence, God himself.

Knowledge of God is also founded on communion rather than philosophical

speculation. This has important implications for theological epistemology which

will be explored later.

8
For example, Zizioulas writes: “There is no ousia in the nude, that is, without hypostasis, to refer to
God’s substance without referring simultaneously to this personhood.” See John Zizioulas,
Communion and Otherness, 125.
9
Ibid., 101.
4
 Otherness implies personal uniqueness. For Zizioulas, otherness is primary and

constitutive of the very idea of being. The human being is defined through

otherness. The otherness as uniqueness is generated in a relationship with the

absolute Other. It is not an ethical concept but an ontological concept. It means that

the Other can truly exist as Other only if it is ultimately regarded as person or

hypostasis and not as self or nature, and every being should be treated as an

absolutely Other. I will explain these concepts in chapter four.

Zizioulas often uses ‘man’ to refer to all human beings. In accordance with his

usage, I also use this word in this way which does not imply a sexist understanding.

3. The necessity of reconstructing a theological ontology

3.1 A change of view of One God

Theological ontology comes from the understanding of the Trinity. Many

theologians regard that the Cappadoican Fathers in the East and Augustine in the

West have said the final words on the Trinity. In the Augustinian tradition, God is

one because of the one ousia which is equally shared by the three persons. It

involves the ontological primacy of the ‘one God’ over the ‘Triune God’.10 The

Augustinian tradition followed and developed by Medieval Scholasticism

understands the three persons of the Holy Trinity as relations within one substance.

The priority of one substance over the three persons, as well as the identification of

the One God with the one substance, and not with the Father is quite clear in this

case. If we give priority to the ‘One God’, we make the Trinity logically secondary

from an ontological point of view.11 Boethius (d. 525) and Thomas Aquinas (d.

10
Augustine divides between economic and immanent trinity with his psychological model of trinity,
which described the inner life of God as being like a human’s memory, intellect, and will. It is
Thomas Aquinas’ scholastic theology which applies this kind of theological speculation to a summit.
11
See John Zizioulas, The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World
Today, ed. Fr. Gregory Edwards (California: Sebastian Press, 2010), 10, footnote, 22.
5
1247) provide the philosophical-theological treatises on the doctrines of the Trinity.

They assumed the authority of the early church’s council regarding the Trinity

(three persons sharing one substance). However, they may also have made the

doctrine of the Trinity irrelevant to the everyday life of Christians by making the

doctrine excessively philosophical.

During the sixteenth century some new reflection on the Trinity begins with the

Protestant reformers. Under the influence of so-called ‘anti-Trinitarian

rationalists’,12 some reformers reject the ‘speculation’ by the medieval scholastic

theologians and their heirs. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the rise of

Deism13 or ‘natural religion’ in Great Britain is another serious challenge to the

doctrine of the Trinity. They teach about ‘reasonable Christianity’. At the same era

the rise of Pietism and Revivalism called ‘enthusiastic religion’ counters the Deism

in Western Christianity.14

Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834), the father of modern liberal theology,

looks for the ‘essence of Christianity’ apart from the dogma of the Trinity which is

regarded as the ‘Hellenization of Christianity’. The moralization of dogma of

12
For example, Anabaptists like Menno Simons and Balthasar Hubmaier reject the classical,
orthodox doctrine of the Trinity; Michael Servetus and Faustus Socinus, the two best-known
heretics during the sixteenth century which was constituted by a relatively diverse group of
unorthodox protestants—rejected from Protestantism by other protestants, were known as the
anti-trinitarians or anti-Nicenes. See Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, The Trinity
(Michigan/ Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 75.
13
The most influential deists are John Locke (1632-1704), John Toland (1670-1722), and Matthew
Tindal (1656-1733). The deists or rationalists tended toward an implicit anti-Nicene attitude. The
representative book of Locke is The Reasonableness of Christianity (1695) which has an influence
on the rise of Deism; Toland, Christianity Not Mysterious (1696); Matthew Tindal, Christianity as
Old as the Creation (1730). The English philosopher John Locke is often considered one of the
fathers of modern, Enlightenment philosophy and Deism. They influence the educated, intellectual
elite of Great Britain and North America and spread to the European continent.
14
Such as Philipp Jakob Spener (1635-1705), Nikolaus Ludwig Count Von Zinzendorf (1700-1760),
John Wesley (1703-1791), and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). They tend to accept Nicene
orthodoxy as a given and focus on experience of God and Christ. Zinzendorf is the leader of the
pietistic Moravians. His contribution to the doctrine of the Trinity is an analogy of the Trinity as ‘the
holy family’ and the Holy Spirit as ‘our dear Mother’. Jonathan Edwards is a leader in the revival
known as the Great Awakening of the 1740s and also a passionate Calvinist. He has little new to
contribute to the doctrine of the Trinity. His theological work focuses on questions of human
depravity, divine sovereignty, original sin, and salvation. See Roger E. Olson and Christopher A.
Hall, The Trinity, 80-88.
6
Albrecht Ritschl (1822-1889) and Adolf Harnack (1851-1930) greatly influence

the North American Protestant movement known as the ‘social gospel’. Walter

Rauschenbusch (1861-1918), a leader of social gospel, has little use for the doctrine

of the Trinity. Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971) questions the social gospel’s idea of

the Kingdom of God as a moral ideal toward which we make an evolutionary

progress. He also criticizes the individualism of nineteenth-century Protestant

social ethics for its inability to respond to the injustices of the Industrial

Revolution.

Luther and Calvin propose ‘Sola Scriptura’ as a formal principle of

Protestantism. It was a foundational doctrinal principle of the Protestant

Reformation held by all the Reformers. However, in fact Catholicism, Lutheranism,

and Calvinism mainly defined confessional churches by written confessions of

faith.15 It was a recovering of scholasticism in some sense when they consciously

formulated their doctrinal statements. However, as explained later, this is an

inadequate expression of the Christian faith, because they lack a personal truth.

During the twentieth century a new reflection on the Trinity becomes a tide. A

personal or a living God rather than a substantialist God becomes necessary for the

era. A study of the doctrine of the Trinity should relate to the deeper existential

needs of the human person. Zizioulas points out: “the faith in the Holy Trinity is not

simply a matter of accepting a theoretical proposition about God, but of relating

one’s existence to this faith; Baptism in the Trinity means entering into a certain

way of being which is that of the Trinitarian God. Trinitarian theology has profound

existential consequences.” 16 Ebeling opposes abstractionism and emphasizes a

15
See David M. Whitford ed. Reformation and Early Modern Europe: A Guide to Rresearch
(Missouri: Truman State University Press, 2007), 137. In 1958, the Catholic historian Ernst Walter
Zeeden suggested a new approach: confession-building or confessional formation.
16
John Zizioulas, “The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today: Suggestions for an Ecumenical Study”,
in Alasdair I. C. Heron ed., The Forgotten Trinity (London: BBC/CCBI Inter-Church House, 1991),
7
living God: “By ‘word’ we do not mean the single word. This word, as a unit of

language, is an abstraction over against the original conception of word as

containing an encounter.”17 Hick criticizes the Greek philosophers’ approach: “God

was not a proposition completing a syllogism, or an abstract idea accepted by the

mind, but the reality which gave meaning to their lives.”18 Theology should relate

abstractness to concreteness. Christian doctrines should not only pay attention to

‘being-in-general’, but also to particular persons or things. It looks that we need an

ontological revolution in theology.

A Swiss pastor Karl Barth (1886-1968) inaugurates a new era in Christian

theology and revives the doctrine of Trinity. It was extended by the Austrian

Catholic theologian Karl Rahner (1904-1984). German-American thinker Paul

Tillich (1886-1965) explained the concept of Triunity from within a generally

liberal Protestant framework. British theologian Leonard Hodgson (b. 1889)

revived Richard of St. Victor’s and the Cappadocian Fathers’ social analogy of the

Trinity. German theologian Jürgen Moltmann (b. 1931) developed a theology of

Trinity from the suffering of God on the cross, in dialogue with the traditional

depersonalized God. Latin American Liberation theologian Leonardo Boff (b. 1938)

related the Trinity to liberation theology. He supports a vision of authentic human

community structured according to the community of persons characterized by

equality and reciprocity. The moderately feminist Catholic theologian Catherine

LaCugna (1952-1997) wrote a massive book on the Trinity entitled God for Us: The

Trinity and Christian Life in the last decade of the century, which also supports a

personalist turn.

The doctrine of the Trinity is the source of the renewal at once of Christianity

19.
17
G. Ebeling, The Nature of Faith (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1961), 185.
18
John Hick, Philosophy of Religion (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963), 61.
8
itself and its influence on culture. Eastern Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas

linked the doctrine of the Trinity with the ontology of person in communion. The

book Being as Communion by Zizioulas was called a landmark book for the

Trinitarian theology in the last century. John Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology

represents in some ways the culmination of Trinitarian thought in the twentieth

century. We can see the importance of John Zizioulas’ ontology of person through a

comparison with the Trinitarian theologies of Barth and Rahner.

For Barth, the Trinitarian formula una substantia--tres personae means one

divine subject in three different modes of being. 19 To avoid the use of words

connoting consciousness as a modern concept, Barth uses his own term ‘mode’ to

replace the term ‘person’. 20 Then the concept of ‘person’ is not a clear concept of

the ontological identity in Barth’s Trinitarian theology. As Gunton criticizes the

concept of person in the theology of Barth: “It is rather that it fails to reclaim the

relational view of the person from the ravages of modern individualism.”21

In Catholic theology, Karl Rahner (1904-1984) is the most influential thinker in

the modern age.22 Karl Rahner questions the traditional Western view of the Trinity

and calls for a return to the Biblical view and the Greek Patristic position which

identifies God with Father, rather than with the divine substance, as the Augustinian

and medieval scholastic traditions do. He proposes a personal God which is called

19
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I, eds. G. W. Bromiley and T. F. Torrance (Edinburgh: T & T
Clark, 1963), 363.
20
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, vol. I, 355. Barth writes: “We have avoided the term ‘person’ in
the thesis at the head of the present section. It was never adequately clarified when first introduced
into the Church’s vocabulary, nor did the interpretation with it was later given and which prevailed
in mediaeval and post-Reformation Scholasticism as a whole really brings this clarification, nor has
the injection of the modern concept of personality into the debate achieved anything but fresh
confusion.”
21
Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian theology (Edingburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 195.
22
Karl Rahner was a leader at the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II) in the early 1960s and
continued to work for change of the church’s thought and life after the Council until his death in the
early 1980s. His best-known and most influential monograph on the doctrine is entitled The Trinity.
Rahner’s main target throughout his life was to oppose widespread secularism, especially in the
West. See Karl Rahner, Foundations of Christian Faith: An Introduction to the Idea of Christianity
(New York: Crossroad, 1982), 46.
9
God the Father.23 Like Barth, Rahner does not treat the concept of person clearly as

a theological ontological category, because he regards that the modern concept of

person is tied to individualism derived from experience and philosophy, irrelevant

to the doctrine of Trinity.24 In order to avoid the modern concept of person, Rahner

uses the ‘mode of subsistence’ to replace ‘person’ or ‘hypostasis’ in the doctrine of

Trinity; he prefers to use the description ‘the threefold God’ instead of the ‘triune

God’ and “transforms the classical doctrine of the Trinity into the reflection Trinity

of the absolute subject.” 25 Therefore, some problems arise. For example, the

relation between the Father, the Son and the Spirit is difficult to describe: “Because

the modes of subsistence within the Trinity do not represent distinct centers of

consciousness and action, there cannot be any mutual ‘Thou’ between them

either.”26 Jürgen Moltmann criticized Rahner because he did not apply the concept

of person to the three persons of the Trinity but applies the concept of person for the

unique essence and consciousness of God: “And in his way he introduced this

individualistic idea into the nature of God himself. The ‘one unique essence’ of God

is ‘the sameness’ of the absolute subject and must hence be understood in an

exclusive sense.” 27 Through the brief survey above, it seems that despite the

resurgence of the doctrine of Trinity, the substantialist and individualist influences

linger on.

23
Ibid., 84. Rahner considers this one of the fundamental assertions about God. Karl Rahner starts
from the assumption that God is one self-communication of God, that is: “each one of the three
divine persons communicates himself to man in gratuitous grace in his own personal particularity
and diversity…since it implies a free personal act, since it occurs from person to person, as a
communication of ‘persons’.” See Karl Rahner, The Trinity, trans. J. Donceel (London: Burns &
Oates, 1986), 35.
24
See Karl Rahner, The Trinity, 43.
25
Ibid., 147.
26
Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God, trans. Margaret Kohl
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1993), 146.
27
Ibid.
10
3.2 A change of the view of the human person

At the same time, during the past century, from a perspective of anthropology,

there has been an increasing interest in the study of the concept of personhood,

because it is connected with issues like personal identity, the rights of the person or

ethical-medical concerns. The modern concepts of person of the Cartesian-Lockean

type, which understand person as a center of consciousness, have been opposed by

some theologians, such as John Zizioulas, Gunton, Yannaras, LaCugna and

Leonardo Boff. 28 They believe that person as an individualist concept in the

Western tradition has its roots in Augustine and Boethius. Since Descartes

discovers the cogito, the external world and other people have always been a source

of philosophical difficulty.29 From a perspective of epistemology, the Other has to

be reduced to something of the self to be recognized. It embodies the self prior to

being the Other. The other has been ignored. Therefore, it not only involves an issue

of epistemology, but also a problem of relationship among humans. An impersonal

relationship leads to indifference and alienation which may cause mental illness and

social problems.

Therefore, it is necessary to renew the understanding of personhood in theology

from an ontological relational perspective rather than the perspective of an isolated

individual or self. To do this, we propose that the theological concept of person or

personhood can be traced back to the understanding of personhood in Greek

Fathers’ Trinitarian theology. Therefore, this research includes two parts: one

involves the view of God, and the other involves the view of human person. In

28
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion (Crestwood, N. Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985);
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality (Crestwood, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1984); Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West (Brookline, Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox
Press, 2006); Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco:
HarperSanFrancisco, 1991); Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1997); Leonardo Boff, Trinity and Society (Maryknoll, N.Y.: Orbis, 1988).
29
Bo-Myung Seo, A Critique of Western Theological Anthropology: Understanding Human Beings
in a Third World Context (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), 88.
11
contrast with Western traditional concepts of person, divine persons will be

understood as relational entities.

4. About John Zizioulas and his ontological thought

John Zizioulas was born in 1931, and studied at Thessaloniki and Athens. He

was Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Glasgow, and then

Visiting Professor at Geneva, King’s College London, and the Gregorian University,

Rome. He became the Metropolitan of Pergamon in 1986. He is the member of the

committees for dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, and with the Anglican

Church, and has been Secretary of Faith and Order at the World Council of

Churches in Geneva.30 He is a prominent Orthodox scholar. Being as Communion:

Studies in Personhood and the Church constitutes the single most significant

Orthodox academic theological work of the last half-century. In 2006, the book

Communion and Otherness was edited and published. It includes many articles

which explain the notion of personhood further. In 2010, Gregory Edwards edits

Zizioulas’ articles into a book The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, and the

Church and the World Today. Up to now, his works include seven books. Most of

his articles are collected in these books.31

Zizioulas’ thought is based on the Cappadocians’ identification of hypostasis not

30
Douglas H. Knight, ‘Introduction’, in Douglas Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas:
Personhood and the Church (Aldershot, Hants/Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2007), 3.
31
John Zizioulas, Ellenismos Kai Christianismos: H Synatese ton duo Kosmon (Athens:
ApostolikeDiakonia, 2003). This would be rendered in English as Hellenism and Christianity: The
Meeting of Two Worlds. This work is not published in English. Being as Communion: Studies in
Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimirs Seminary Press, 1997); 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); Communion and Otherness: Further Studies
in Personhood and the Church (London: T&T Clark, 2007); Lectures in Christian Dogmatics
(London: T&T Clark, 2009); The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the
World Today (California: Sebastian Press, 2010). Remembering the Future: An Eschatological
Ontology (London: T&T Clark, 2012).
12
with ousia but with personhood,32 and One God is the personhood of the Father

rather than the ousia of God. It means that the personhood of the Father is the

initiator of personal being. What the Father ‘causes’ is a transmission not of ousia

but of personal otherness.33 Therefore, ‘One’ and ‘Many’ are constitutive of being

simultaneously in the Trinity. The starting point of Zizioulas’ theology is the

ontological notion of personhood. He has a deep reflection on the whole systematic

theology. His lectures have been edited in a book Lectures in Christian Dogmatics

in 2008. Although Zizioulas’ treatise Being as Communion was not at first greeted

as a constructive contribution to the doctrine of the Trinity when it was published in

1985, in the early 1990s it began to influence the reflection on Trinitarian theology

and represents in some ways the culmination of Trinitarian thought in the twentieth

century. Ziziouals is now regarded as a major Orthodox contributor to modern

theology.34 For example, Yves Congar considers Zizioulas to be “ ‘one of the most

original and profound theologians of our epoch’ and that he presents ‘a penetrating

and coherent reading of the tradition of the Greek Father’.”35

As I stated above, in the process of reviving the doctrine of Trinity, against

Barth’s mode of being and Rahner’s mode of subsistence, Zizioulas retains the use

of the word persons in relation to the three persons of the Trinity and he reinterprets

the ontological concept of person in terms of the Cappadocian theology.36 Thus, he

reconstructs a theological ontology: it not only raises the particular to an

ontological ultimacy which is impossible in Latin traditional substantialism, but

32
All three of the great Cappadocian fathers, Basil the Great (330-370), Gregory of Nazianzus
(329-390), and Gregory of Nyssa (335-394), were key contributors to the Trinitarian reflection in the
fourth century.
33
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 130.
34
See Roger E. Olson & Christopher A. Hall, The Trinity, 112-113.
35
On the cover of the book John Zizioulas, Being as Communion.
36
He considers that the modern dilemma of personhood is that by emphasizing self-existence in
freedom as the true essence of personhood, and regarding suicide as the ultimate expression of
freedom, the question of self-actualization cannot be truly answered.
13
also emphasizes a notion of a living God, a personal God. A personal God provides

a ground for the being of the human person. The notion of ontological otherness

also preserves the dignity of the individual. Theology and anthropology are in the

end inseparable. It is the purpose of this research to investigate how Zizioulas deals

with these matters, and to what extent his treatment is satisfactory.

5. The current research in this field

The discussions about Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology mainly involve two issues:

the first is the Father as cause which has been questioned by many Western

theologians, even by theologians who insist on a relational ontology. For example,

T. F. Torrance particularly cites from Cyril and Athanasius to oppose the primacy of

the Father, warning that there is a danger of an ontological subordinationism, with

the Son and the Spirit at least appearing to be less truly God than the Father. Alan

Torrance also regards that the Cappadocian projection of causal notions into the

internal life of God would seem to be potentially damaging to the identification of

being with communion. Gunton insists that all three persons are together the cause

of a kind of mutual and reciprocal constitution.

The second issue concerns the ontological concept of person: is the concept of

person really from the Cappadocian Fathers? Some Orthodox scholars such as

Lucian Turcescu, Andrew Louth and John Behr have claimed that Zizioulas’

concept of personhood is different from the view of the Cappadocians. Lucian

Turcescu questions the legitimacy of Zizioulas’ use of materials taken from the

Cappadocian Fathers. John Behr’ objection is that Zizioulas’ theology is “an odd

mixture of metaphysics and mythology”.37

37
John Behr, ‘The Trinitarian Being of the Chruch’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 48.1/2004:
67-68.
14
 At the same time, Zizioulas’ theology gains support by many theologians. Alan

Brown defends Zizioulas’ theological ontology. For example, in response to Behr’s

objection to Zizioulas’ theology, Alan Brown criticizes that the meaning of Behr’s

objection is not entirely clear, and argues that concepts such as ‘being’, ‘logos’,

‘truth’ and ‘life’ are all Scriptural. 38 Colin Gunton, in his thesis on “Person and

Particularity,”39 defends Zizioulas’ theological ontology. He thinks that Zizioulas

traces the roots of Western culture back to the thought of Augustine and Boethius

which provides an argument for the individualistic tendency in which the other is

regarded as a threat. Douglas Farrow, in his thesis, ‘Person and Nature: The

Necessity-Freedom Dialectic in John Zizioulas’, 40 argues that John Zizioulas’

ontology of personhood is different from existentialism.

There are some articles in the book The Theology of John Zizioulas edited by

Douglas Knight which explore Zizioulas’ thought especially. There are some other

books which discuss Zizioulas’ concepts of communion and person. For example,

Patricia Fox’s book, God as Communion: John Zizioulas, Elizabeth Johnson, and

the Retrieval of the Symbol of the Triune God, investigates Zizioulas’ central

thought: ‘God as communion’. In Alan Torrance’s book, Persons in Communion:

An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation—with Special

Reference to Volume One of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics, there is a section

which contrasts Karl Rahner and John Zizioulas on triunity. Alan Torrance highly

evaluates Zizioulas’ contribution: “Supremely important is his establishing the

primacy of communion over revelation and affirmation of the integral relationship

between truth and communion—‘the essential thing about a person lies precisely in
38
Alan Brown, ‘On the Criticism of Being as Communion in Anglophone Orthodox Theology’, in
Douglas H. Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 71.
39
Colin Gunton, ‘Person and Particularity’, in Douglas Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas:
Personhood and the Church, 97-108.
40
Douglas Farrow, ‘Person and Nature: The Necessity-Freedom Dialectic in John Zizioulas’, in
Douglas Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 109-124.
15
his being a revelation of truth, not as ‘substance’ or ‘nature’ but as a ‘mode of

existence’”.41

Aristotle Papanikolaou, in his article “Is John Zizioulas an Existentialist in

Disguise? Response to Lucian Turcescu”, looks at Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood as a relational ontology of Trinitarian personhood. In his book Being

with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion, he explores a

debate between two contemporary Orthodox theologians, Vladimir Lossky and

John Zizioulas, over how to adequately conceive the doctrine of the Trinity as an

expression of the realism of divine-human communion, and hence, of the God who

is both transcendent and immanent. 42 In part three of Paul Collins’ book Trinitarian

Theology: West and East— Karl Barth, the Capppdocian Fathers, and John

Zizioulas, he discusses the concept of personhood, the category of being and the

category of communion.

6. The significance of the research and my contribution

When it comes to the research on Zizioulas, it seems that the researchers tend to

focus on the level of relation and particularity which is contrasted with the

individualist understanding of personhood. Because the ontology of relationality

begins to prevail in modern theology, researchers often appreciate Zizioulas’ view

of being as communion, and confuse Zizioulas ontology of personhood with

ontology of relationality.

This is a monograph which studies Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood in the

realms of Trinity and anthropology.

41
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation—with Special Reference to Volume One of Karl Barth’s Church Dogmatics
(Edingurgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 304.
42
Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006).
16
 Firstly, although personalist ontology is an assertion of the metaphysics of the

particular which is constituted in relationship, it is not the entire significance of

Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood. However, if we have a deeper understanding of

the concept of personhood, we will find that the emphasis of Zizioulas’ theology is

the other. Therefore, it is not sufficient for us to explain person only in terms of

relation. In other words, the emphasis of understanding of Zizioulas’ concept of

personhood is the concept of otherness rather than relation. Otherness as an

ontological category breaks away from the traditional understanding of person as

an egocentric concept. Otherness as an ontological category will change our view

of God and human beings from the traditional solipsism. For a long time, whether

in theology or philosophy, the problem of anthropology is the other. The purpose of

Zizioulas is to “let the other free”. I try to understand Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood according to this problem of the other. Therefore, my research

embodies the perspective of the other.

Secondly, some critics recognize that there is no dimension of sin in the theology

of Zizioulas, but do not explore why Zizioulas puts the sin on a moral level rather

than an ontological level. They have no analysis from the concept of personhood

itself. I will point out the distinction between the Cappadocian and Zizioulas’

understanding of the implication of personhood: essence inside or outside the

notion of personhood. Because Zizioulas regards essence as substantial necessity

according to Greek philosophy, he has to forsake this concept of essence in order to

keep the freedom of personhood. But it brings an anthropological consequence:

overlooking sin and justice because Zizioulas regards them as substantial concepts.

How to solve this problem? I will explain sin and justice and as relational or

existential concepts. Thus, it will not conflict with the relational concept of

personhood and personhood can include the concepts of sin and justice itself.
17
Therefore, sin and justice are both substantial and relational or existential. I think

that it is a more complete understanding of the being of God and the human person

than that of Zizioulas.

Thirdly, between the self and the Other, Zizioulas only emphasizes an

ontological principle: the Other prior to the self. Because of the lack of the notion of

justice, I criticize that this ontological principle cannot influence a society.

7. Summary of thesis
The thesis includes three parts. Part one mainly explores the source of ontology

of personhood and Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood. It includes two chapters.

Chapter one traces the background and source of the ontology of personhood. There

is then a conceptual revolution and an ontological revolution in the fourth century:

the identification of hypostasis not with ousia but with personhood; and an

identification of God’s ultimate being with a person rather than ousia. A new idea of

one God comes into being. It influences the Council of Constantinople in 381 CE

and the Council of Chalcedon in 451 CE.

Chapter two will focus on Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood which is based on

the Father as personal cause. Zizioulas’ Trinitarian formula is not completely same

with the Cappadocian Fathers. I explore the importance of causality in theological

and philosophical contexts. I also discuss some theological criticisms of the Father

as cause and of the concept of personhood, as well as Zizioulas’ critique of the

ontology of relationality.

Part two mainly examines the being of humans as personhood in communion. It

consists of two chapters. Chapter three shows the person of God as the existential

ground for the personhood of human. This chapter clarifies the basic meaning and

three characteristics of personhood; the doctrine of the Trinity gives us the truth of
18
our own existence: the Father as personal cause for personal existence and

personhood in the light of Christology. At the same time I will introduce two modes

of existence and the transformation from one type to the other: from biological

hypostasis to ecclesial hypostasis.

Chapter four explores personal otherness and communion and clarifies the basic

meaning of Otherness: it implies uniqueness. Otherness is constitutive of the human

being. It raises a criticism of the self prior to the Other. ‘Otherness’ as a primary

anthropological concept is contradicted by the category of totality in traditional

Western philosophy and theology. I explore a possibility to transform a

human-human relation from an impersonal relation to a personal relation. At the

same time, because otherness can only exist in communion, it can be applied to

criticism of Levinas’ concept of otherness without communion.

Part three includes three chapters. Chapter five attempts to explain why the

Western idea of One God causes at least three problems in Trinitarian theology

from the perspective of ontology of personhood: the first is the separation of the

oikonomia and theologia in the doctrine of God; the second is the problem of

Filioque; the third is that unity precedes diversity logically or ontologically in God.

Chapter six criticizes the substantialist theological anthropology from the

perspective of the ontology of personhood. I analyze the concept of personhood in

Western substantialist anthropology, criticize this concept which does not include

otherness and communion, criticize the relationship between God and human as

a-personal union, and the tendency towards moralism.

Chapter seven analyzes the contributions and criticizes the flaws of Zizioulas’

ontology of personhood. Zizioulas reconstructs a theological ontology and provides

a new theological approach, sets up a personal knowledge for Christianity, and

changes the view of soteriology: salvation first concerns hypostasis’ transformation

19
rather than human nature. However, there are some problems in Zizioulas’ theology

of ontology of personhood: he wrongly regards the concepts of sin and justice as

ethical categories alone and his theology is detached from the injustice of the

society and so on.

20
 Part I

The Being of God as Personhood, or

Persons-in-Communion

21
 Chapter One

The background and source of the

ontology of personhood
In Greek ontology, Ousia as a single reality is more real than individual beings.

While unchanging Form is an eternal ontological category for Greek philosophy in

Plato, ‘person’ as an ontological concept is inconceivable. Only the soul is a form

that ensures man’s continuity. For Aristotle, a man is a concrete individual or

person. Death dissolves the concrete individual or person completely but not his

`substance’. So the person is not an ultimate ontological category as `substance’. So

the concept of personhood, i.e. the state of persons-in-communion is ontologically

impossible too. However, for Jewish and Christian theology, the situation is

different. Firstly as Christ says, God is not “the God of the dead, but the God of the

living” as witnessed in the book of Moses, “I am the God of Abraham, and the God

of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.”(Mark 12:26-27) The individual can attain eternal

existence because of the resurrection of Jesus according to the Bible. According to

the Cappadocian Fathers, ‘person’43 could be used as a synonym for hypostasis: it is

a combination of the ontological category ‘hypostasis’ and the Greek relational

category ‘prosopon’, which originally meant ‘face’ or ‘mask’ in Greek theatre. It

will provide a completely different ontology which would be regarded as

impossible in Greek substantialist philosophy. Ousia, as a philosophical term, is not

found in the Bible, whereas hypostasis appears in Wisdom, Paul, and Hebrews.44

Therefore, there is a possibility for an ontological revolution.

43
Person and personhood in this thesis should not be understood in terms of ‘personality’, i.e., a
complex of natural, psychological or moral qualities; or in terms of self-consciousness. Person
cannot be conceived in itself as a static entity, but only as it relates to other persons. Person as a
relational category has a marked contrast with the Boethian individualistic tradition. See John
Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 212.
44
Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1977), 161.
22
 This chapter will analyze the influence of substantialism on the idea of God, its

theological problems and the possibility of an ontological revolution which leads to

the ontology of personhood. In this way, new ideas of God and ultimate reality have

come into being.

1.1 The influence of Greek substantialism on the idea of One God

The concept of ousia (or substantia in Latin) has affected the doctrine of God

developed by Christian writers of the first four centuries A.D., and especially the

Trinitarian concept of one God in three persons. Ousia is a Greek word. From the

standpoint of etymology, ousia means being; it is the abstract noun connected with

the verb ‘to be’. Ousia means ‘thing-of-a-kind’ in Plato and the thing in question is

real. It corresponds to the question ‘What is x?” Ousia is more real than any

individual existence. The concept of ousia or reality refers to a system of

unchanging Forms which lend to the world of appearances some measure of order

and consistency. In the Timaeus, Plato shows how the unchanging Forms come to

be embodied in the world of appearances. When ousia indicates the most

permanent form of being and the ultimate principle of explanation, it corresponds to

Aristotle’s ‘secondary substance’.

Substance—what is most properly and especially so called—is what is neither said of a subject
nor in a subject; e.g. this man, or this horse. What are called secondary substances are the
species in which are the things primarily called substances, together with the genera of these
species; for instance, this man belongs in the species, man, but the genus of the species is
animal; these, then, are called secondary substances—for instance, man , and animal.45

Ousia is absolute being and it is the cause of x or the first manifestation of x. In

Metaphysics Book XII, Aristotle bases his doctrine of God on his cosmology. He

conceives of an unmoved mover or first cause, eternal, invisible and unchangeable.

45
Aristotle, Categories, 2a 31; 3b 10.
23
Divinity is conceived as a perfect mind, and divinity must be absolutely one. On the

other hand, Platonic use of ousia as a collective term denotes ‘unchanging (genuine,

and therefore immaterial) reality. When Christian theologians applied these terms

to God in the Bible, problems inevitably arose.

The word homoousios, translated ‘consubstantial’ or ‘coessential’ in Latin,

appears to have been introduced by Gnostic Christians of the second century.

Researcher found it in summaries and criticisms of Gnostic teaching made by

Irenaeus. It was used by Ptolemaeus and some other second-century Gnostics.46

Irenaeus takes over the word from his Gnostic opponents, and he applies this word

to common philosophical themes: the whole created order.47

At the end of the third century, homoousios has been used to formulate the

Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It is especially noteworthy in Tertullian, who relies

upon the phrase una substantia to express the unity manifested in the three Persons

of the Godhead. The una substantia represents the stuff or reality, called spiritus,

which the Second and Third Persons derive from the First.48 Origen was the first

writer to use the term homoousios to indicate the Son’s relationship to the Father.

The terms ousia and homoousios were drawn into the Arian controversy: the Arians

claim that the Father is necessarily superior to the Son in status and the Son is

derived from the will of the Father; The Son is not ‘consubstantial with him’.

Therefore, ousia and homoousios had become the focus of Nicene controversy.

The Nicene Fathers have interpreted homoousios along the line which suggests

that Father and Son are identical in the strictest sense, i.e., ‘a single reality’. ‘A

single reality’ was a common Western expression of Christian monotheism.49 It

46
Christopher Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: At the Clarendon Press, 1977), 190.
47
Ibid., 201.
48
Ibid., 202.
49
Ibid., 248.
24
easily leads to an understanding which regards Father and Son as aspects of a single

reality. This is a flaw of Greek substantialism which cannot distinguish the

otherness of each person.

Christopher Stead points out that the usage of ousia in the early Christian

centuries presents more problems than is commonly supposed.50 He analyzes these

problems in his book Divine Substance. I will choose two main themes from Stead

which concern my thesis.

First, God has been described as mind or first principle:

Christian thinkers show some uncertainty about the description of God as mind…some early
Christian writers use this description without reserve; most later writers use it more sparingly,
in special contexts and with emphasis on the element of analogy. Two lines of thought in
particular kept it in circulation. First, the mere title, the Logos, implies a power that derives
from the Father as a word or thought proceeds from the mind that expresses it…Secondly, the
concept of God as mind lives on in the doctrine of universal providence and foreknowledge.
This hardly needs illustration or discussion; the doctrine that God made the world with wisdom
and intelligence and guides and foresees human history rests on a clear biblical foundation and
can easily borrow the language of contemporary Platonic theism; it can appeal to the doctrine
that intelligent beings are eo ipso[ by that very fact] better than unintelligent, and the maker
superior to the product; thus no characterization of God is tolerable if it deprives him of
intelligence.51

Secondly, the ‘Person’ is not an ontological concept of ultimate existence.

Because hypostasis and ousia are used as synonyms, the Son will not be another

hypostasis. As Christopher Stead points out: “We do not find clear references to a

system in which Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are described as constituting one

Godhead which is conceptually distinguishable from each of the three persons,

including the Father.”52

1.2 Problem of the ‘person’ in the Trinitarian formula

50
Ibid., 131.
51
Ibid., 169-170.
52
Ibid., 249.
25
 At the end of the second century, Tertullian (c. 160-225AD) is the first to employ

the word ‘Trinity’ (una substantia, tres personae). He indicates the unity of God

with ‘substance’, and the other word ‘persons’ means plurality. While `substance’

refers to the unitive element, ‘person’ designates the otherness, or independent

subsistence, of the three.53 “Persona” is not an ontological term, but it is used in

contrast to substantia which is metaphysical. Most recently the interpretation of

persona has proved that the word involves a combination of individuality and

relationality in Tertullian’s theology. 54 According to Osborn’s study, Tertullian

never defines it in either way but he does use it in both legal and philosophical

senses. In Tertullian’s Trinitarian theology, the words persona and substantia have

not dissolved the tension between the three and the one. The history of the concept

of person is summed up by Osborn: “After Tertullian, persona has a ragged history.

Marius Victorinus does not use it in his account of the Trinity. Hilary and Ambrose

tell us little. Even Augustine is less than lucid on Trinitarian usage. The chief

problem is Christological not Trinitarian: how can Jesus, God and man, be one

person? ...It is claimed that only in Boethius, who imports the meaning of

hypostasis does something like a philosophical definition appear.”55

The Western Greek writer, Hippolytus, translated the formula for the Christians

of the East. Prosopon has been used in Greek with reference to the Trinity first by

Hippolytus. 56 The Latin ‘substantia’ may be literally translated into Greek as

‘hypostasis’. In general, hypostasis was used to denote single unchanging being of

God. The word ‘personae’ has been expressed in Greek as ‘prosopon’ which meant

‘aspect’ or ‘façade’. The concept of ‘person’ becomes an adjunct to ontological

53
Eric Osborn, Tertullian, First Theologian of the West (UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997),
132-133.
54
Ibid., 138.
55
Ibid.
56
G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London, S.P.C.K., 1952), 159.
26
being. The Greek term ‘prosopon’ replacing the Tertullian Latin term ‘personae’

risks denoting that “persons would be fronts for the essence of God behind or

beneath them”.57 It can lead to Sabellianism. 58

1.2.1 Western Sabellianism in Trinitarian theology

Sabellianism represented an interpretation of the doctrine of the Trinity.

Sabellius (fl.ca. 215) taught in Rome and his teachings became widespread in the

West. At the beginning of the third century, this approach to deal with the Christian

doctrine of God in terms of the Logos took the form of modalism, for which the

persons of the Trinity are roles that God takes for the sake of creation. God played

the role of Father in the Old Testament, the Son in the New Testament, and Holy

Spirit in our own time, adopting these three identities to perform particular

functions for us within history.59

Sabellius uses the term ‘person’ not in an ontological sense but roles assumed by

the One God. Thus `person’ has been used in the singular, denoting only “One

Person” in God.

1.2.2 Eastern Tritheism

In the East, Origen (c. 185-254AD) used the term “hypostases” for the Trinity.

Origen affirms that each of the Three is a distinct hypostasis from all eternity, not

just manifested in the economy as for Tertullian. It stems directly from the idea of

eternal generation. The independence is theologically prior to the union as love,

will and action. The ultimate ground of His being is the Father, who alone is ‘the

57
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. Douglas Knight (London: T & T Clark,
2008), 50.
58
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 38, see footnote 30.
59
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 48.
27
fountain-head of deity’. As Kelly said, “one must be careful, however, not to

attribute to Origen any doctrine of consubstantiality between Father and Son.”60

The Son is the Father’s image, the reflection of His glory.

From Origen onwards the East continually replaces the term ‘person’ with

‘hypostasis’, which means God had three unchanging beings, ‘tres substantiae’. It

risked collapsing into tritheism and it contradicted the Latin expression ‘una

substantis’ if the hypostasis is identified with the Latin ‘substantia’ in the

Trinitarian formulation.61

1.2.3 Arianism and Eunomianism

The Logos approach has originated with the Greek apologists, particularly Justin

Martyr (c.100-165AD), but developed by the Alexandrian theologians: Clement

and above all Origen. The concept of Logos for Philo is an instrument for

harmonizing Greek cosmology with the Old Testament. On the basis of the Fourth

Gospel, Justin applies this idea to Christ, and establishes a foundation for

communication with the Greeks. This offered the possibility of converting Greek

thought to Christianity, but there is a danger for the Christian gospel. According to

the Logos approach, God projected the Logos in order to create the cosmos. It has

not changed the Greek concepts of God and cosmology, and could lead to a wrong

Christology: “For many generations after Justin the Logos could be thought of as a

projection of God always somehow connected with the existence of the world.”62

The question is whether the Logos was uncreated or a part of the creation. For the

second-century apologists there was little clarity on whether the Logos and Spirit

60
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper & Row Publishers, 1978), 130.
61
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 37.
62
John Ziziouals, Communion and Otherness, 180.
28
are divine or mere parts of creation.63 Arius pushes this question to the extreme

ending up in heresy.

In about 318, Arius, a priest of Alexandria, began to teach a doctrine that God is

ingenerate and eternal. Since the Son is generated he is not eternal, but created by

the will of the Father. The fundamental premise of Arius’ system is the affirmation

of the absolute uniqueness and transcendence of God, the unoriginate source of all

reality. Arius said, “We acknowledge one God, who is alone ingenerate, alone

eternal, alone without beginning, alone true, alone possessing immortality, alone

wise, alone good, alone sovereign, alone judge of all, etc.”64 The being and essence

of the Godhead cannot be shared or communicated. The Arians asserted that the

Logos should be related to creation rather than to God’s being. According to Kelly,

the view of Arius and his colleagues on the Son can be summarized in four aspects.

Firstly, the Son must be a creature. He is a perfect creature, and not to be

compared with the rest of creation; he comes from the Father’s will. “To suggest

that the Son is an emanation from, or a consubstantial portion of the Father is to

reduce the Godhead to physical categories.”65

Secondly, the Son as a creature must have had a beginning. Prior to His

generation He did not exist.

Thirdly, the Son can have no communion with, and indeed no direct knowledge

of, His Father. Although He is God’s Word and Wisdom, He is distinct from that

Word and that Wisdom which belong to God’s very essence; He is a creature pure

and simple, and only bears these titles because He participates in the essential Word

and Wisdom. In Himself He is, like all other creatures, “alien from and utterly

63
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 46.
64
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (New York: Harper & Row, Publisher, 1978), 227.
65
Ibid., 228.
29
dissimilar to the Father’s essence and individual being”.66 Being finite, therefore,

and of a different order of existence, He cannot comprehend the infinite God.

Fourthly, to the question whether the Son can be called God or is indeed Son of

God, the answer is that these are in fact courtesy titles. Arius wrote: ‘He is not God

truly, but by participation in grace…He too is called God in name only.’67

Arius speaks of three persons of the holy triad in the sense of Origenistic

language. The Arians seek an array of Scriptural texts in support of their theses,

such as Proverbs 8. 22 (‘The Lord created me’), Acts 2. 36 (‘God has made Him

Lord and Christ’), Romans 8.29 (‘The first-born among many’), Corinthians I, 15

(‘The first-born of all creation), etc. Arius regards that there are a host of passages

which attributed ignorance, weakness, suffering or development to the Son of

God. 68 The Arians themselves claim to be simply continuing the Alexandrine

tradition which could be traced back to Origen.69

Eunomius was by birth a Cappadocian, and slightly older than Gregory. He was

one of the most interesting heretics of the fourth century. He and his teacher Aetius

developed the Arian heresy to its extreme. He completed and formulated his

teacher’s heretical tenets. They asserted the absolute unlikeness of the being of the

Father and that of the Son. Starting with the conception of God as absolute being,

unbegotten and incapable of begetting, they think that eternal generation is

inconceivable, and the generation of the Son of God must have had a beginning.

The Arian conclusion is that the Son did not exist before the generation. They are

against the equality and similarity of essence from the mere fact that the Father’s

essence is unbegotten, and that of the Son is begotten. The Son is the first creation

66
Athanasius, C. Ar. I, 6. See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 228.
67
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 229.
68
Ibid., 227-230.
69
Ibid., 230.
30
of the Divine Energy, and is the instrument by whom God created the world. In this

sense, the Son is the expressed image and likeness of the Energy of the Father as the

origin of creative power.70 They viewed the Holy Spirit as sharing the Divine nature

in an even remoter degree, as being only the production of the only-begotten Son.

Through the influence of the followers of Aetius, Eunomius became bishop of

Cyzicus in Mysia in 360. When Gregory came, in 379, to Constantinople, he retired.

He was a consummate dialectician in the eyes of all parties.71

Consequently, there is no ontological concept to locate the real distinctiveness of

Father, Son and Spirit in the uniqueness of each hypostasis, described in terms of its

relation of origin. In order to refute Arianism and Eunomianism, there is a necessity

in theology to make a sharp distinction between substance and person. While the

concept of nature expresses the equality of the hypostases, persons express the

different origins in God.

1.3 Reasons underlying the problem of the Trinitarian formulation

For Sabellianism, God is of One substance, and there is no ontological identity

for each person of the Trinity.

Arius’ conception of God is in the end Greek. The Christology has been

understood through the Logos approach. It can be summed up in the question of the

relationship between God and the world. For the ancient Greek, there is an

ontological affinity between the world and God: from the early Pre-Socratic

tendency to unite being and thinking as to form a unity. “This affinity was expressed

either through the mind (nous), which is common between God and Man, or

70
“Image’ and ‘Energy’ borrowed from Holy Scripture (Heb. I. 3). But borrowed with a
difference— not ‘the Image of His Substance,’ which they would not admit, but of His ‘Energy,’
which is a very different conception. Cf. Philip Schaff ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers
(Massachusetts: Hendrickson Publishers, 1995), second series, Vol. 7, 281.
71
Cf. Philip Schaff ed., Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, second series, Vol. 7, 282.
31
through the Reason (Logos), which came to be understood especially by Stoicism,

as the link, at once cosmic and divine, that unites God and the world.”72 Arianism

highlighted the philosophical issue of the ontological relation between God and the

world.73

I will analyze the reasons from two aspects: one involves the idea of truth; the

other involves the concept of person.

1.3.1 The Logos approach to the idea of truth

For Greek thought, truth is the unity existing between the intelligible world, the

thinking mind and being. The way to seek truth transcends history. For Christianity,

Christology is the sole starting point to understand truth because Christ claims

himself to be the truth (John 14:6). For Jews, truth may be considered as God’s

promises and the manifestations of God’s presence and His activity in history

towards an ultimate end. When Christ as the truth encounters with Greek thought

and the Jewish mentality, Zizioulas states that the Greek Fathers face a problem:
Can truth be considered simultaneously from the point of view of the ‘nature’ of being (Greek
preoccupation), from the view of the goal or end of history (preoccupation of the Jews), and
from the viewpoint of Christ, who is both a historical person and the permanent ground (the
Logos of being—the Christian claim)—and all while preserving God’s “otherness” in
relation to creation?74

During the patristic period, the existence of God was a ‘given’ for nearly all

Christians or pagans alike. The question that preoccupied the Fathers was not

whether God existed or not, but the question which tormented entire generations:

how He existed. To answer the question about the being of God was not easy. The

greatest difficulty stemmed from ancient Greek ontology: the being of God75 and

72
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 180.
73
See John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 181.
74
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 72.
75
In the thought of ancient Greeks, their God was a rational, connective force, that holds the world
32
the being of world formed an unbreakable unity.76

The Logos approach is one of the most dramatic attempts to reconcile the Greek

idea of truth with the Christian truth. Because of Christ’s claim to be the truth (John

14:6), Christology is the sole starting point for a Christian understanding of truth.

Zizioulas argues: “Nevertheless, this presupposition is by no means easy to

interpret. How should one understand Christ to be the truth? ‘What is truth?’(John

18:38). Christ left Pontius Pilate’s question unanswered, and throughout the ages

the Church has not answered it with one voice. Our problems today concerning

truth appear to stem directly from these different understandings of truth in the

course of the Church’s history.”77 There are some issues in the Logos approach

according to Zizioulas.

The first issue is about epistemology. Justin developed an idea of truth similar if

not identical to that of Platonism: God, who is known ‘only through the mind’,78 as

the ultimate truth, is understood to be ‘he who is always the same in himself and in

relation to all things.’79 This mind was given, according to Justin, simply ‘in order

to contemplate that same being who is the cause of all intelligent beings.’80 Justin’s

view has not rejected the ontologically necessary link between God and the world.

Thus there is an interrelated epistemology which emphasizes the possibility of

knowing God (for ancient Greeks, the cosmos gives us knowledge of God). Nous is

the medium between God and Man which leads us to the idea of Logos. Christ, as

the Logos of God, establishes a link between God and the world, between the truth

and the mind. Thus, Christ is not truth itself. But Jesus said, “I am the truth” (John

together in harmony (cosmos means order and beauty), or a reason that allowed them to explain the
cosmos. For the Greeks the cosmos shows us something of the nature of God. Cf. Lectures in
Christian Dogmatics, 41.
76
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 16.
77
Ibid., 67.
78
Justin, Dial. 3, 7. C.f. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 73, footnote, 17.
79
Justin, Dial. 3. 5. C.f. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 73, footnote, 16.
80
Justin, Dial. 4. 1. C.f. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 73, footnote, 18.
33
14:6).

The second issue is about ontology. The danger of a monistic ontology was not

apparently problematic for the Church until the time of Clement of Alexandria, who

tried to elaborate a theological system starting from Greek substantialist ontology.

The application of the Logos concept in this sense led to the crisis of Arianism.

Clement’s way of understanding truth develops along the direction of Justin. The

Greek view of truth influences the way of understanding the idea of God: truth as

the ‘nature’ of being. This view has a decisive significance for later theology in the

West. Origen connected the idea of God so closely with that of creation that he

came to speak of eternal creation. Since God is eternally a creator, the link between

the Logos of God and the logoi of creation comes to be an organic and unbreakable

unity, as in the Greek idea between God and the world. Origen interpreted the

Scriptures essentially in a Greek manner.

The third issue is about Christianity. Christ is ‘truth itself’ not in his humanity,

but in his relation to truth. It is ‘true’ only in so far as it participates in the truth. The

Logos of God seems to indicate that “the incarnation does not realize the truth in a

fundamental way, but merely reveals a pre-existing truth”.81 The prototype of truth

is found in spiritual souls, this truth as a kind of image has been imprinted in those

who think according to the truth.82 Thus it essentially does away with the need of an

authentic revelation.

The fourth issue is about salvation. By developing the Logos as the link between

the world and God, Justin gave the principle of knowledge a key role in salvation to

the point of arguing that even before Christ and among the pagans true knowledge

as salvation was possible, for example, among the ancient Greek philosophers. This

81
John Ziziouals, Being as Communion, 77.
82
See John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 75-77.
34
in fact provides a fertile ground for Gnosticism.

The fifth issue is about spirituality. A Christian Gnosticism emerges, i.e., the

tendency to approach spirituality through the intellect. “The line inaugurated by

Justin was developed further in the catechetical school of Alexandria, where Greek

philosophy was influential. Two great names stand out in this respect: Clement of

Alexandria (d. 215) and Origen (d. 253). Their thought could be described as

representing a kind of Christian Gnosticism with particular significance for

spirituality.”83 There are two aspects of Gnosticism, in particular, which challenged

the early church in the Patristic age. On the one hand, it tends to undermine the

value of the material world and to attribute creation not to God but to a demiurge,

which is to be held responsible also for the evil that humanity experiences and this

evil domain resides principally in matter. Spirituality in this approach consists in an

escape from matter in time, which would involve asceticism or its opposite. On the

other hand, it concerns the understanding that salvation and spiritual life consist of

knowledge.

Both Clement and Origen operated with the idea of the Logos and used

revelation as their starting point in theology and spirituality. However, this

revelation is not the revelation of Jesus Christ. As Zizioulas comments, “This idea

of revelation seems to lie at the very heart of the problem, since revelation always

unifies existence, through an idea or a meaning that is singular and comprehensive,

forming a connection between created and uncreated rationality.”84 Like Clement

influenced by Gnosticism, Origin identified spiritual perfection with true revelation

and knowledge that the Logos of God grants to the human soul. The essence of

spirituality is the contemplation of the divine Logos or of God in and through the

83
John Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 162.
84
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 77.
35
Logos.85 He undermined the historical Christ. His influence accounts for many

deviations from the early biblical mentality.86

1.3.2 ‘Persona’, ‘Prosopon’ and ‘hypostasis’ in Graeco-Roman thought

The term ‘person’ entered theological terminology since Tertullian in the West

and introduced in the East probably through Hippolytus. The history of the terms

‘hypostasis’ and ‘person’ is extremely complicated. The historical aspect of this

development with regard to the use of these terms in the Trinitarian theology of the

Greek Fathers is very obscure. Here I will analyze its meaning briefly according to

its significance for the thesis.

The term ‘person’ in Greek thought was originally understood anatomically as

the part of the head that is ‘below the cranium’, or from the usage in the theater as

actor’s mask. Zizioulas considers that it includes two aspects from the actor’s mask.

One is that man strives to fight against the harmonious unity which oppresses him

as rational and moral necessity, the necessity of the cosmological order we call fate.

So he has to suffer the consequences and he can never escape this fate ultimately.

The other is that the same man who becomes a person in the mask acquires the

bitter taste of a brief freedom as a unique and unrepeatable entity. The ‘person’ is

tragically related to the mask; the “person” is not his true “hypostasis” which means

“nature” or “substance” in Greek. In other word, the mask of “person” has no

ontological content in the sense of an eternal being.

In ancient Roman thought, from an etymological perspective, the origin of

persona is probably to be traced back to the Etruscan word phersu, which would

connect it with the ritual or theatrical mask. At the same time, declares Zizioulas,

85
Ibid., 162.
86
See John Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 163.
36
the anthropological connotation did not differ essentially from the use of the Greek

in the beginning, but the Roman persona leaned more towards the idea of

concrete individual. Besides the theatrical mask, persona as a category has a more

sociological content: “persona is the role which one plays in one’s social or legal

relationships, the moral or ‘legal’ person which either collectively or individually

has nothing to do with the ontology of the person”. 87 The Roman persona

subordinates his freedom to the organized whole, and the individual is a means, a

possibility, of tasting freedom or affirming one’s identity. This identity marks one

man different from another which is guaranteed by the social whole. Zizioulas

regards that the politicization and sociology in the Western mentality cannot be

understood without involving the Roman persona.88

The concept of person in Greek and Roman thought is ontologically impossible

to be grounded. The term “hypostasis” was linked with the term “ousia” or

substance (the Latin term subsantia would literally translate into Greek as

hypostasis), and even identified with it in Greek philosophy. It was accepted in the

first Christian centuries. Zizioulas cites Athanasius’ Letter to the Bishops of Egypt

and Libya about the identification of the two terms: “hypostasis is ousia and has no

other meaning apart from being itself…for hypostasis and ousia are existence.”89

The other argument is the Synodical letter of Alexandria 362 AD which refers to

Nicaea as having anathematized those who profess that the son is “of another

hypostasis or ousia.”90 The problem with hypostasis by itself is that it does not

express the relational dimension of God or the communion between the Three. (see

1.4.2 below)

87
Ibid., 34.
88
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 27-49.
89
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 36. See footnote 23.
90
Ibid. 36.
37
 In conclusion, we can see that ‘person’ and ‘hypostasis’ are not related in ancient

Graeco-Roman world. As Zizioulas says: “it is precisely this identification of

substance with hypostasis, diffused so widely in the Greek thought of the first

Christian centuries, that created all the difficulties and disputes concerning the

holy Trinity in the fourth century.” 91 Therefore, there is a necessity for an

ontological revolution.

1.4. A new idea of truth and an ontological revolution

Athanasius claims that the Son belongs to God’s substance. But the idea of

ontological otherness within one substance has been proposed by the Cappadocian

Fathers through an ontological revolution. In Zizioulas’ view all of these have been

realized by the transformation of the idea of truth from the Logos approach to the

Eucharistic approach.

1.4.1 A new idea of truth: the identification of truth with life in worship

The Eucharist, also called Holy Communion, the Sacrament of the Altar, the

Blessed Sacrament, the Lord’s Supper, or other names, is one of the most important

Christian sacraments. According to Zizioulas, the Eucharist as the locus of

experience of the triune God is communion with the living God, the source of

theological knowledge. It gives priority to experience over reason in theological

epistemology. Such a priority for Zizioulas is consistent with the Eastern patristic

approach and in contrast with Western substantialist approach in theology.

In his work Being as Communion the Eucharistic approach was introduced as the

Greek patristic synthesis concerning truth. The Logos theologians of the first three

centuries understand truth in terms of cosmology. An entirely different approach,

91
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion 36.
38
i.e., the Eucharistic approach, to the idea of truth has been provided by the Greek

Fathers to answer the question of truth. The representatives are Ignatius of Antioch

(c.35-50AD) and St Irenaeus (c.130-202AD). Zizioulas tells us that this was not an

intellectual movement. Through studying the works of Irenaeus and that of Ignatius,

he found that the Eucharist is the center in their theology and its role is decisive for

the identification of being or existence with life. The identification of being with

life has been developed in the Greek patristic thought in the second century.

The word ‘life’ in western minds means the idea of something ‘practical’ as

opposed to something ‘contemplative’ or ‘theoretical’. From Greek thought,

Zizioulas searches the cause of why life had been put in opposition to being. For

Aristotle, life is a quality added to being, and not being itself since the individual

life cannot be eternal. The truth of being is not found in life, but precedes it. “With

being we use the verb to be while with life we use the verb to have: life is possessed

by being, just as a movement or telos is possessed by things in general. It is

precisely because life is something possessed, and cannot precede being, that truth

as the meaning of being relates ultimately to being as such, not to life.”92 Thus the

Greek mind was unable to say at the same time ‘being and life’. But the Christian

had to say both at once. This identification of being with life affected the idea of

truth in a decisive way. It receives further clarification in the Trinitarian theologies

of Athanasius and the Cappadocian Fathers—they provide the foundation for the

revolution of Greek ontology.

Zizioulas gives both historical and theological reasons for this identification.

There are three reasons to explain why the theology of the Eucharist leads to an

identification of existence with life and therefore truth with life.

Firstly, the Bible sets the roots of the relationship between the Eucharist and

92
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 79.
39
life. Ignatius of Antioch speaks of truth in connection with life. This view is the

continuation of the Fourth Gospel’s definition of knowledge of God as ‘eternal life’

or ‘true life.’ (John 3: 15, 16; 14: 6; 17:3). Ignatius’ way of combining knowledge

with life points towards an ontological rather than an ethical approach to truth

which leads to an understanding of truth as practice. For Ignatius, life signifies not

only practice but being forever: i.e., that which does not die. Truth is identical with

the ‘teaching of incorruptibility’.93

Secondly, the Eucharist as the true Christ in the historical and material sense

of ‘truth’ has been applied to the fight against Docetism and Gnosticism: Ignatius

in combating Docetism and Irenaeus in combating Gnosticism. For both men the

Eucharist imparts life. Thus truth becomes historical without ceasing to be

ontological.

Finally, the Eucharist was understood as community: “The life of the Eucharist is

the life of God Himself, but this is not life in the sense of an Aristotlelian movement

which flows out mechanically from the interior of existence.”94 There is an analogy

between the existence within the Trinity and the existence within the members of

the Eucharistic community. It is the life of communion with God, such as

communion in the Trinity. Irenaeus arrives at the conclusion: “Knowledge and

communion are identical”, 95 i.e., Man knows God and himself in this

communion-event. A synthesis made by the Greek Fathers leads to the

identification of truth with communion.

Because the Eucharistic experience implies that life is given in an event of

communion, we can call the Eucharistic theology a theology of life. The

significance of the Eucharistic theology lies in how to explain Christ as truth

93
Ibid., 79-80.
94
Ibid., 81.
95
See Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. IV, 20:5. See also John D. Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 81;
40
because He is life and all beings find their meaning in their incorruptible existence

which are imparted and actualized in the event of communion rather than lying in

an epistemological principle to explain the universe which has been exemplified by

Justin’s Logos approach. But Irenaeus seems to stop here, because his primary

concern is that created being ultimately depends upon the Trinity. The question of

the being of God or Trinitarian theology has not been answered until the fourth

century. Zizioulas emphasizes: “But it must be strongly underlined that without this

foundation of the Church’s Eucharistic experience, such as exhibited in Ignatius

and Irenaeus, the Trinitarian theology of the fourth century would remain a

problem.”96 It means that persons can experience this living God of communion in

the Eucharist and this leads directly to the Trinitarian theological developments of

the fourth century: the identification of being and life with communion.

1.4.2 The ontological revolution by Athanasius

Facing the challenge of the heresy, the Church was compelled to search for

greater clarity for the identity of the Son and Spirit: whether Logos and Spirit are

divine or part of creation. The Arian crisis forced the Fathers to revise Origen’s

teachings and the cosmological approach to truth. The fundamental question is a

revision of the doctrine of the Logos. Athanasius proposes that the doctrine of the

Logos can be maintained only if the Logos becomes identical with the Son as part

of the Trinity.97 Firstly, Athanasius made a clear distinction between ‘substance’

and ‘will’. The Son’s being belongs to the substance of God, while the being of the

world belongs to the will of God. It “makes it plain that the being of the Son in his

relation to God was not of the same kind as the being of the world”. 98 This

96
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 82.
97
Cf. John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 83.
98
Ibid., 85.
41
distinction has been used to argue against the Arians, through breaking out of an

ontological affinity between God and the world in Greek philosophy. Zizioulas

comments:
He thus avoided the trap into which Justin and Origen has fallen, not by abandoning ontological
thought but, on the contrary, by raising it up to the ultimate character which its nature requires.
To be is not the same as to will or, hence, as to act. This assertion, apparently Greek and not
Hebrew, presented itself as the means for protecting the biblical roots of the Gospel from the
dangers of Greek ontology. God’s being, in an ultimate sense, remained free in relation to the
world, in such a way that the Greek mind could identify it as ‘being’ without having to link it
with the world out of an ontological necessity.99

Secondly, Zizioulas argues that Athanasius developed a relational character to

the idea of substance. “To say that the Son belongs to God’s substance implies that

substance possesses almost by definition a relational character,”100 i.e. ‘Father’ is

by definition a relational term, because no Father is conceivable without a son. It is

obvious that Athanasius makes the use of ‘substance’ un-Greek and leads to a new

ontology.101 As a consequence, the ontological idea of communion belongs not to

the level of will and action but to that of substance. When communion becomes an

ontological category, Athanasius transformed the idea of substance.

From the viewpoint of epistemology, Athanasius’ ontology of communion is not

based on a Greek rational starting point, but comes from the Eucharistic experience:

Communion, freedom and otherness of God and the world. In order to understand

the relationship between communion and substance, we should review briefly two

main approaches to relational category in Greek philosophy: Stoic and Aristotelian.

For Stoicism, a category is a predicate, a way of talking about being. In Stoic

philosophy there are four categories. The first is substance or substrate, which

corresponds to matter. Second, there is the quality (poion) that differentiates matter.

99
Ibid., 84.
100
Ibid., 84.
101
Ibid., 85.
42
Thirdly, there is ‘being in a certain state’ or disposition. This is the category of

relation, which distinguishes relatively impermanent or accidental dispositions of

individuals. Fourthly, there is relative disposition, which classifies properties that

one thing possessed in relation to something else. In Stoic category, the relation is

relative: “Relative dispositions are the relations of an individual thing to other

individual things that are associated with it in the world, but on which its

continuing existence as an entity does not depend.”102

For Aristotle, in Book I of the Categories, Aristotle lists ten categories of being.

The first category is divided into primary and secondary substances. Primary

substance are individual substances, secondary substances are kinds of substances,

or species and genera respectively. The two meanings of the word substance would

also prove decisive in both Latin and Greek medieval theology. The remaining nine

categories of being are accidents, that is, characteristics that may reside in a

substance but are not essential to it. These include quantity, quality, relation,

place, time, posture, having, acting, and being acted on. With respect to the

category of relation, a term is said to be relative to another if one implies the other,

for example, husband to wife.

In Stoic and Aristotelian philosophies, relation does not indicate what something

is in itself, i.e., an ontological category. Therefore, Athanasius’ thought involves a

revolutionary change concerning the meaning of substance in Greek thought. It

means that the ultimate character of God’s being as substance can be conceived

only as communion.103 Zizioulas claims: “This was significant progress towards an

ontology founded on biblical premises, a decisive step towards a Christianization of

Hellenism.” 104 In Latin Trinitarian tradition, which would rely on Aristotelian

102
J. M. Rist, Stoic Philosophy (Cambridge: University Press, 1969), 169.
103
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 84.
104
Ibid., 86.
43
rather than Stoic philosophy, relation would be identified with substance: relation

shows what something is. In the Greek Trinitarian tradition, relation will show only

how, but not what, something is.105

But this relational divine substance had not been further conceptualized. In the

interior of this ontology, speaks Zizioulas, Athanasius left a number of basic

problems unanswered. One of the questions raised by Athanasius’ ontological basis

concerns the being of God. The use of the idea of substance by Athanasius means

that the Son has always belonged to God’s being. “Athanasius demonstrated that

ontological otherness is an inevitable result of the distinction between will and

nature, but he does not show to what extent ‘interior’ communion within one

substance implies otherness at an ontological level.”106 In Athanasius’s age, ousia

and hypostasis are synonymous. An identifying of ousia with hypostasis implied

that a thing’s concrete individuality (hypostasis) means simply that it is (i.e. its

ousia). A category must express the distinctiveness while emphasizing both the

relations between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit and their transcendence to the

world within the immanent Trinity. Ousia was clearly not the answer to express the

threeness of God, since three ousiai would be equivalent to three gods. On the

other hand, the problem with hypostasis by itself is that it does not express the

relational dimension of God or the communion between the Three.

1.4.3 The Cappadocian ontological revolution

In order to avoid Sabellianism, Zizioulas argues: “A mode of expression thus had

to be found which would give theology the ability to avoid Sabellianism, that is,

which would give an ontological content to each person of the Holy Trinity, without

105
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 58-59.
106
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 87.
44
endangering its biblical principles: monotheism and the absolute ontological

independence of God in relation to the world. From this endeavour came the

identification of hypostasis with person.”107 It came through a radical innovation

that involved a redefinition of terms. The significance of the identification of

prosopon with hypostasis “includes a philosophical landmark, a revolution in

Greek philosophy”.108

In order to avoid Arianism and Eunomianism, it is necessary to make a sharp

distinction between substance and person in God: “By being a person the Father

was to be distinguished from divine substance, and thus it would be wrong to

conclude that the Son is not God or homoousios with the Father. When God is

called Father or ‘unbegotten’, he is called so not with reference to his substance,

but to personhood.”109

In the fourth century the Cappadocian Fathers sort out problems of the

Trinitarian theology concerning the persons and unity of God, through the

concept’s revolution.

According to Zizioulas, up until that time ‘hypostasis’ had meant being or

substance and it does not express the relational dimension of God or the

communion between the Three. The Cappadocian Fathers made a distinction

between these two meanings so that essence and hypostasis could no longer be

regarded as synonyms, but they identify ‘substance’ with ‘nature’.110 The Latin

term ‘substantia’ was expressed in Greek not by ‘hypostasis’, but by ‘ousia’. The

‘hypostasis’ meant the same as ‘person’. From then on, the ‘person’ is no longer an

adjunct to a being and becomes the being itself and is simultaneously, as a most

107
Ibid., 37.
108
Ibid., 36.
109
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 160.
110
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 50.
45
significant point, the constitutive element (the “principle” or “cause”) of beings.111

It is a combination of the ontological category of ‘hypostasis’ and the relational

dimension of a concrete ‘prosopon’. “The relational dimension of person needed to

be combined with the ontological character of hypostasis and this is precisely the

genius of Basil,” 112 argues Zizioulas. This identification was to Basil the most

adequate way to express both the distinctiveness of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,

and their inseparable unity or koinonia and hypostasis in the new sense are

related to one another. This was a revolutionary move: “the term ‘hypostasis’

which had referred to what was most fundamental and unchanging, was now a

synonym for person, which consequently was understood as an ‘ontological’

category; person no longer denoted just a relationship that an entity could take on

or the role that an actor would play”113. But it has received almost no mentioning in

the history of philosophy. According to Zizioulas, the possible reason is that

“‘hypostasis’ bore several nuances which allowed this development, so this

conceptual revolution was not entirely arbitrary”114.

The Cappadocian Fathers defended the ontological integrity of each person and

successfully excluded Sabellian understanding in Trinitarian theology. On the other

hand, against Eunomianism, a clear and fundamental distinction between nature

and person allows the concept of person to emerge more clearly as a distinct

category in ontology.115 However, the Cappadocian Fathers would face the other

problem: how to avoid tritheism or how to deal with the unity or oneness of God.

According to Zizioulas, the Cappadocian Fathers solve the problem through two

steps. The first step is to suggest the ousia (substance) or physis (nature) is a general
111
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 39.
112
Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion
(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 83.
113
John D. Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 51.
114
Ibid., 50.
115
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 160.
46
category, while hypostases (plural) refer to concrete individuals. In this way it is

logically possible to speak of one substance and three hypostases (or persons)

through the analogy of the three men. But the other theological difficulty arises,

because three men would be analogical with three Gods.

The second step is to distinguish the being of person and the being of God. In

human existence, nature precedes the person and each human person can be

conceived as an entity independent ontologically from other human beings. But

each of the persons of God’s existence transcends space and time, so God has not

had a beginning, and the three persons do not exist prior to their divine nature and

vice versa, but coincide with it. At the same time, the three persons of the Trinity

are united in an unbreakable communion (Koinonia) and each person exists by the

others. The three persons of the Trinity exist simultaneously as an unbreakable

‘one’. Then the ‘one’ does not precede the ‘many’ but the ‘one’ and the ‘many’

coexist. Logically, the Cappadocian Fathers solve the tension between ‘tritheism’

and the ‘oneness of God’.116

Substance indicates divine oneness, but the ground of unity remains the

Father.117 It brings us to the following discussion on the identification of God with

the Father in Chapter Two.

1.5 Influence of the ontological revolution on the Second

Ecumenical Council and later Christological debate
1.5.1 Its influence on the Creed of Constantinople

Zizioulas provides the historical testimony about the influence of this ontological

revolution on the Council of Constantinople of 381 CE. The Creed of Nicaea at the

116
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 51.
117
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 118.
47
point where it referred to the Son as being ‘from the substance of the Father’ (ek tes

ousias tou patros) had been changed into ‘from the Father’ (ek tou patros). The

pneumatology of the Second Ecumenical Council involves the following main

theses:

1) The Holy Spirit is God

Zizioulas asserts that it is a victory for Basil’s way of speaking of God. First,

there is no mention of the word homoousios (Basil avoids this term on his

pneumatology). Homoousios is not replaced with another philosophical term, but

with strictly scriptural language. “It describes him as Lord (kyrion), a reference to 2

Cor. 3.17, as Life-giving (Zoopoion), which is taken from Jn 6.63, and as ‘having

spoken through the prophets’ (2 Pet. 1.21).”118 Zizioulas concludes that it is based

on soteriological and existential concerns rather than on speculative or

metaphysical thought.

Secondly, the only non-scriptural language used to describe the divinity of the

Spirit is ‘worshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son’. Zizioulas

argues that it is another Basilian victory, “for it was he who argued for the divinity

of the Spirit in terms of equal honor (homotimia) in worship.”119

2) The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father

Zizioulas argues that because Basilian theology had affected the pneumatology

of Constantinople much, then the Creed about the procession of the Spirit from

the Father should be explained by Basilian terms. First, ‘the Holy Spirit

proceeds from the Father’ means that the ultimate ontological ground of the Holy

118
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 191.
119
Ibid., 191.
48
Spirit is a person, and not substance. Zizioulas asserts that it safeguards the faith

that the person ‘causes’ God to be.120 Second, the Spirit, by proceeding from the

Father, and not from divine substance, is a person too. Zizioulas points out that a

question raised is whether the Spirit proceeds also from the Son. In other word, the

question concerns the Filioque. We will discuss this issue in Chapter Five.

Because of the influence of Basilian theology on the pneumatology of

Constantinople, Zizioulas claims that the reference of the Creed to the procession of

the Spirit from the Father should be placed in the light of this theology. The

importance of this idea has been expressed through two aspects: on the one hand,

the utmost implication of the phrase ‘from the Father’ should be interpreted through

the ‘person’ in the true sense. “In asserting that the Spirit proceeds from the Father

we must understand, in strictly Basilian terms that the ultimate ontological ground

of the Holy Spirit is a person, and not substance.”121 The Spirit is not simply a

power issuing from divine substance; He is a product of love and freedom and not

of substantial necessity.

1.5.2 Its influence on Chalcedonian Christology

The Creed of Chalcedon, as the Doctrine of the Hypostatic Union was adopted at

the Council of Chalcedon in 451 in Asia Minor.122 The definition is that Christ is

“acknowledged in two natures”, which “come together into one person and

hypostasis”.

The Christology debate involves the usage of hypostasis and person:

In opposition to Nestorian and to Jacobite doctrine, it was also important to clarify the

120
Ibid., 192.
121
Ibid., 192.
122
That Council of Chalcedon is that fourth of the first seven Ecumenical Councils accepted by the
following Christian denominations: Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Catholic and many Protestant
Christian churches. It is the first Council not recognised by any of the oriental Orthodox churches
who may be classfied as non-Chalcedonian.
49
 meaning of Trinitarian terms and to distinguish among them. The sixth chapter of The Doctrine
of the Fathers consisted of a group of quotations intended to show “that nature and hypostasis
are not the same, but that ousia and nature are the same, likewise that hypostasis and person are
the same.” All these terms had been employed in the discussions of the doctrine of the person
of Christ…in the Trinity, nature or ousia referred to that which was one, hypostasis or person
to that which was more than one; in the person of Christ nature or ousia referred to that which
was one. A further complication was the history of previous usage even within the orthodox
tradition, where ousia and hypostasis had sometimes been equated. Both the Nestorian and the
Jacobite traditions had their own distinctive usages: the former distinguished between
hypostasis and person, assigning to Christ one person but two hypostases; the latter tied nature
to hypostasis, ascribing to Christ not only a composite hypostasis, as did the Chalcedonians,
but a composite nature. ‘What causes the error of the heretics,’ according to John of
Damascus, ‘is their saying that nature and hypostasis are the same’.123

The Chalcedonian formulation owes a lot to this neat identification from the

Cappadocian Fathers onward between hypostasis and persona, so much so that the

Chalcedonian Fathers can tackle the complicated problem of Christ’s identity and

personhood in the new Chalcedonian formulation of ‘one hypostasis, two natures’.

123
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, II (Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 81-82.
50
 Chapter Two

Analysis of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood

In chapter one, I introduce the idea of an ontological revolution advanced by

Zizioulas. The ontological revolution described above denotes two things

simultaneously: first, it is a conceptual revolution, i.e., person as a relational

ontological being as fundamental as ousia, and personhood, i.e. the state of the

person especially in the state of personal or relational communion, becomes related

ontological categories. At the same time, it means the identification of God with the

Father. The primary principle in Trinitarian theology is the personhood of the

Father, i.e., the Father as the cause of the existence of Trinity. Some theologians

accept the conceptual revolution, but they oppose the Father as cause. I will explore

the importance of ‘the Father as cause’ in the later part of this chapter.

Moreover, some Orthodox scholars such as Lucian Turcescu, Andrew Louth and

John Behr have claimed that Zizioulas’ view of personhood is in fact different from

the views of the Cappadocian Fathers. This chapter will explain the meaning of the

concept of personhood, and discuss the issue of the Father as personal cause in the

being of God. Some criticisms of and defenses for Zizioulas will be advanced,

including Zizioulas’ critique of relational ontology.

2.1. The meaning of the being of God as person

2.1.1 The being of God as person answering the question ‘how God is’

For the Cappadocian Fathers, the Trinitarian formula is: one ousia, three

hypostases that is identified as the Latin personae. The Father is the ground of unity

or oneness. In Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology, the Trinitarian formula is: God the

Father, three persons. Though Zizioulas does not entirely oppose the concept of

51
essence, Zizioulas’ emphasis is on the person of the Father. This ontology of

personhood means that person precedes substance. All of Zizioulas’ theological

thought is founded on the concept of personhood. He termed this approach an

ontology of personhood and the resultant theology ‘personal theology’.

For Zizioulas, there are three ways to describe the being of God in terms of

Cappadocian theology: (a) that God exists, (b) what God is, and (c) how God is who

he is.

For (a) to say that God exists, is merely to indicate his existence rather than

non-existence.124 The question of God’s existence was not one that patristic writers

had to engage with.

For (b) the question is ‘what God is’. The ‘what’ question relates to the essence of

a thing. Saint Gregory Nazianzus makes this distinction between ‘what’ and ‘that’

questions in his Second Theological Oration. Because the essence of God is simply

beyond our conception, Gregory claims that we cannot give an answer to this ‘what’

question. It is the first principle introduced by the Fathers that we cannot know the

‘what’, i.e., the essence of God. Zizioulas contrasts it with a Greek principle: “a

basic principle of Greek thought is that we can come to know the essence of beings

and that the mind can achieve this, by conceiving the idea and then being led to the

essence itself.”125 According to Plato, our minds reach beyond the material world to

that truth. The more the mind is purified of all materiality, the more it is able to

reach the reality, which is what the form is. For Aristotle, the essence of things is in

the material hypostasis. There are certain natural laws operating in them. The

Eastern Fathers are different from the Greek philosophers: they believe that the

mind cannot conceive or comprehend the essence of God.

124
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 54.
125
Ibid., 58.
52
 For (c) the question ‘how God is’ represents a third way to refer to the being of

God. It concerns the question of ‘how’ something is, i.e., in what way God is who

he is. In Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, Zizioulas answers this question in terms

of the view of the Cappadocian Fathers: “God is God as Father, Son and Holy

Spirit—these persons indicate how God is”.126 Here Zizioulas sees the issue of

‘how’ as ontologically fundamental: “The ‘how’ question is as ontologically

fundamental as the ‘what’ question: they both refer to what we call ‘being’.” In

Communion and Otherness, Zizioulas directly describes that the Father as cause is

to answer how God is: “Giving existence or being to the Son by the Father is a

matter not of nature, of the what God is, but of how God is.”127 In this book he

discusses the issue of causality and he distinguishes between ousia and person or

hypostasis in the divine being. The person of the Father has been discussed as an

ontological principle in the doctrine of God. Thus, we can see that Zizioulas

describes this ‘how’ question from different angles and both angles form a whole to

answer the ‘how’ question.

2.1.2 The being of God as person giving rise to otherness and communion

The consequence of the Father as cause is that the personal Father generates

personal otherness and communion in the divine being. Otherness and

communion are two aspects of the concept of the person. Zizioulas proposes the

possibility for their coexistence in Trinitarian theology. “The significance of the

person rests in the facts that he represents two things simultaneously which are at

first sight in contradiction: particularity and communion. Being a person is

fundamentally different from being an individual or a ‘personality’, for a person

126
Ibid., 57.
127
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 129.
53
cannot be imagined in himself but only with his relationships.”128 In short, the

Father as cause is the origin of the Trinitarian personhood. Here, two points are to

be noted.

Firstly, person as cause generates otherness129. In the doctrine of the Trinity,

when the concept of ‘person’ is identified with ‘hypostasis’, the concept of ‘person’

becomes an ontological category, and otherness will become ontologically ultimate

in the case of God’s three persons. In the Cappadocian view, these three persons are

indeed three complete entities. Three complete persons have a common substance

(substantia or ousia). The particularity and integrity of each person is as

fundamental as what is common to them that gives them their unity.

In one sense, the Father as personal cause is about transmission of personal

otherness.130 “This implies that the idea of causation is used in order to describe the

how of divine being and avoid making the emergence of the Trinity a matter of

transmission of ousia. What the Father ‘causes’ is a transmission not of ousia but of

personal otherness (i.e., of the how of being). The principle of causality

distinguishes the persons, it involves the emergence of otherness in divine

being.”131

Secondly, person is a relational entity in Trinitarian theology. Zizioulas sets up

an idea of relational entity through all of this: each is found entirety within the other;

each person has his own ontological integrity, and yet they are one. In other words,

each person is distinct from another but each exists within the other persons. The

characteristics of relational entity can be analyzed on two levels:

(a) They are constituted in relationship. Even the Father as a relational entity is

128
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 106.
129
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 103-104.
130
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 130.
131
Ibid., 129-130.
54
inconceivable without the Son and the Spirit.

(b) The Fatherhood of God as relational avoids the accusations of being as

‘oppressive’ or ‘paternalistic’ or ‘sexist’ and so on; its significance is that a

relational ontology may dissolve the sexism in religion and society. “His freedom in

bringing them forth into being does not impose itself upon them, since they are not

already there, and their own freedom does not require that their consent be asked,

since they are not established as entities before their relationship with the

Father.”132 Zizioulas sets up this idea through contrasting the Fatherhood of God

with human Fatherhood. He points out that the context of human Fatherhood is

opposite to that of the Fatherhood of God: “individuality before relationality, the

entity of the human Father is already established prior to that of his son.”133 So the

divine Fatherhood is totally inconceivable in human terms, which are conditioned

by individualism in time.

Zizioulas raises two related issues to explain relational entity: “How is it possible

for one person to be the bearer of the entire being of God? How is it possible for a

person to exist within another person, without losing their identity?” 134 He

discusses these questions from the contrast between creation and the uncreated:

created nature is different from uncreated nature concerning time and space:

(a) Human nature is composite, and it is being constantly re-divided. Single

person cannot be the bearer of the entire human essence because of his mortality.

For God, there is no beginning and no mortality, no limitation of space, and each

person of God is the entire being, not a portion of the being of God.

(b) “In God, the existence of the one person within the others actually creates a

132
Ibid., 122.
133
Ibid., 122.
134
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 63.
55
particularity, and ‘individuality’ and an otherness.”135

One Substance is common to three persons in Trinity. But referring to this

relationship of persons, the Cappadocian Fathers employed another concept

‘perichoresis’, which refers to the unity and distinction of each person. Zizioulas

interprets this concept in terms of Saint Basil’s letter: “whatever the Father is, is

also found in the Son and whatever the Son is, is also found in the Father. The Son is

found in his entirety within the Father and he has the Father in his entirety within

him. Thus, the hypostasis of the Son is the image and the likeness by which the

Father can be known and the hypostasis of the Father is known in the image of the

Son.”136 The argument comes from the Fourth Gospel; the three persons inhere in

one another. “Whomsoever has seen me, has seen the Father, for I am in the Father

and the Father is in me” (John 14:11).

2.2 Further analysis of Zizioulas’ ontological concept of

personhood
2.2.1 Has Zizioulas misunderstood the Cappadocian concept of divine person?

Some Orthodox scholars such as Lucian Turcescu, Andrew Louth and John Behr,

who style themselves as traditionalists, have claimed that Zizioulas’ view of

personhood, the Holy Trinity and the Church is not really traditional, and is

different from the view of the Early Church Fathers. More specifically, they have

claimed that it differs from the views of the Cappadocian Fathers, namely, St.

Gregory of Nyssa, St. Basil the Great and St. Gregory of Nazianzus.

Turcescu questions the legitimacy of Zizioulas’ use of material taken from the

Cappadocian Fathers. He criticizes that Zizioulas uses nineteenth and twentieth

135
Ibid., 64.
136
Basil, Letter 38, see John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 62-63.
56
century insights to foist on the Cappadocian Fathers. This methodology leads him

to misleading conclusions. Zizioulas is therefore in error when he contends that

the Cappadocian Fathers did not understand a person as an individual.137

Turcescu contends that philosophical concepts shaped Gregory of Nyssa’s view of

the individual. 138 “To explain the distinction between God’s substance and the

divine persons, the Cappadocian Fathers used the analogy of the common and the

particular, as detailed in Aristotle and the Stoics”. 139 It means that Turcescu

understands hypostasis according to the Greek philosophical understanding of the

individual. “It now becomes evident that for Gregory hypostasis means ‘individual’

and is opposed to species. In the human and divine cases, hypostasis can also be

rendered as ‘person’.”140 He cites the example of Gregory: “Similarly, continues

Gregory, one can think of Peter, James, and John as many, yet the human in them is

one.”141

Zizioulas, however, has answered back forcibly from three aspects:

Firstly, if the concept of the person is understood as an ‘individual’, it will

change the view of God.

What sort of being would God be if he possessed such a kind of personhood, defined as three
individuals, three ‘axis of consciousness’, on which natural or moral qualities concur, and who
can be regarded as numbers subject to addition and combination? He would be an
anthropomorphic monstrosity, unworthy of the name of God, and in the eyes of the Fathers, as
sheer blasphemy.142

Secondly, there are limitations and deficiencies of the analogy between human

and divine being in a logical sense. Zizioulas points to Gregory of Nyssa’s claim

137
Lucian Turcescu, “Person versus Individual and Other Modern Misreading of Nyssa”, Modern
theology 18. 4/ 2002: 527-539.
138
Lucian Turcescu, Gregory of Nyssa and the Concept of Divine Persons, (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2005), the whole chapter two.
139
Ibid., 48.
140
Ibid., 53.
141
Ibid., 67.
142
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 171.
57
that it is a misuse of language and not accurately, in using the example of Peter, Paul,

Barnabas, and so on, as three particular human beings or hypostases in order to

illustrate the three persons of the Holy Trinity. The deficiencies are as follows:

human mortality involving separation between human beings; the possibility of

addition or subtraction of human beings; the transience and change of human

persons; the derivation of human persons from different personal causes. These

factors apply purely to human personhood. The Cappadocian Fathers must exclude

these factors when applying this analogy. No natural or moral quality would be used

by any of the Fathers to distinguish a divine person, simply because such qualities

are common to all three divine persons. All natural and moral qualities, such as

energy, goodness, will, and so on, are qualities commonly possessed by the divine

persons and they have nothing to do with the concept of divine personhood.

Prestige supports this view: “the differences that distinguish different human

beings are manifold, but the differences that distinguish the divine persons consist

simply in the ‘idiotetes’ expressed in the names of Fatherhood, Sonship and

Sanctification.”143 Therefore, Zizioulas emphasizes that we should rule out any

idea of a ‘collection of properties’ in divine personhood. The concept of person

should not be understood as an ‘individual’ in the sense of an identity conceivable

in itself, an ‘axis of consciousness’ and a concurrence of natural or moral qualities,

or a number that can subject to addition or combination.

Thirdly, divine person is a relational ‘mode of being’. “For divine personhood,

being defined solely and exclusively in terms of a relational ‘mode of being’, admits

of no individualism in the sense of ….human personhood.”144 It conveys a sense of

ontological relationship. Zizioulas asks a fundamental question: “Are we as

143
G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952), 244.
144
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 176.
58
theologians to draw our concept of human personhood from the study of the human

person or from God?”145 From the observation of humanity, we shall arrive at an

identification of personhood with individuality, centre of consciousness, collection

of natural and moral qualities, and so on.146 If we derive personhood from Trinity,

there is no individualism in the sense of an entity conceivable in itself instead of a

relational ‘mode of being’. The identification of person with an individual is to

misunderstand the Cappadocian thought:

Any application of such characteristics to divine personhood would not simply be a gross
misunderstanding of Cappadocian thought. Ironically enough, it would also amount to a
real—not imaginative—submission of patristic thought to modern existentialist philosophy. For
it is precisely modern existentialist personalism that refuses to do what I have been trying to do
throughout my writings, namely to work out a concept of the person that would be a reflection of
divine, not human, personhood.147

Tucescu’s criticisms have also been answered by Papanikolaou.148 Papanikolaou

claims that Turcescu grounds his critique primarily on interpretation of passages by

Gregory of Nyssa, while Gregory Nazianzus’s thought is a main source for

Zizioulas’s concept of personhood: “Of all the Cappadocian Fathers, however,

Zizioulas’s development of his relational ontology of Trinitarian personhood relies

least on the thought of Gregory of Nyssa…The Cappadocian Father that is never

mentioned by Turcescu is arguably the one whose thought is most significant for

Zizioulas’s claims about a relational ontology of Trinitarian personhood: Gregory

Nazianzus”149

2.2.2 Zizioulas’ understanding of the concept of person vis-à-vis the

145
Ibid., 176.
146
Ibid., 176.
147
Ibid., 176-177.
148
Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Is John Zizioulas as Existentialist in Disguise? Response to Lucian
Tucescu,” in Modern Theology 20.4, October 2004, 601-607.
149
Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Is John Ziziouals as Existentialist in Disguise? Response to Lucian
Turcescu,” in Modern Theology, Vol. 20 no. 4 (October 2004), 602.
59
Cappadocian Fathers

Zizioulas’ understanding of the concept of personhood is based on that of the

Cappadocian Fathers, and his understanding of the rich connotation of the concept

of person has advanced Cappadocian Fathers’ insights to bear on the post-modern

quest for otherness and communion. For Zizioulas, the personal Father generates

personal otherness and communion in divine being. Otherness and communion are

two aspects in the concept of person. “The significance of the person rests in the

facts that he represents two things simultaneously which are at first sight in

contradiction: particularity and communion.”150 However, these two aspects do

not exhaust the whole range of connotations expounded by the Cappadocian

Fathers.

For Gregory of Nazianzus, the concept of ‘person’ not only includes the meaning

of ‘otherness’ and ‘communion’, but also the common substance, essence or ousia

of God which has been hypostasized in each person of the Trinity. Kelly highlights

the concept of perichoresis or co-inherence of Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus, and

Didymus that arose from this understanding of common substantia or ousia.

The essence of their doctrine is that the one Godhead exists simultaneously in

three modes of being, or hypostases. So Basil remarks, “Everything that the Father

is seen in the Son, and everything that the Son is belongs to the Father. The Son in

His entirety abides in the Father, and in return possesses the Father in entirety in

Himself. Thus the hypostasis of the Son is, so to speak, the form and presentation by

which the Father is known, and the Father’s hypostasis is recognized in the form of

the Son.” Here we have the doctrine of the co-inherence, or as it was later called

‘perichoresis’, of the divine Persons. The Godhead can be said to exist

150
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 106.
60
‘undivided…in divided Persons’,151 and there is an ‘identity of nature’ in the three

hypostases.152

To explain how the one substance can be simultaneously present in three Persons

they appeal to the analogy of a universal and its particulars. Basil writes:
‘Ousia and hupostasis’ are differentiated exactly as universal and particular are, e.g. animal
and particular man. From this point of view each of the divine hypostases is the ousia or
essence of Godhead determined by its appropriate particularizing characteristic, or identifying
peculiarity…Gregory of Nazianzus has to confess…the distinction of the Persons is grounded
in Their origin and mutual relation. They are, we should observe, so many ways in which the
one indivisible divine substance distributes and presents itself, and hence They come to be
153
termed ‘modes of coming to be.

Prestige also summarizes the Cappadocian thought: “Yet the whole unvaried

common substance, being incomposite, is identical with the whole unvaried being

of each person; there is no question of accidents attaching to it; the entire substance

of the Son is the same as the entire substance of the Father: the individuality is only

the manner in which the identical substance is objectively presented in each several

Person.”154 Therefore, each person of the Trinity includes a common substance.

However, for Zizioulas, he only takes on the perspective of the otherness of three

persons in the Cappadocian ontological concept of person.

When Jaroslav Pelikan discusses Christology in history, he writes: “Simply

defined, a hypostasis was an ousia together with its properties; but Christ, being a

composite hypostasis, had to be defined as a composite ousia together with its

properties. Another simple definition was to say that hypostasis was the particular,

nature the general.”155 A hypostasis bearing two natures is the creed of Chalcedon.

Therefore, when we describe the meaning of hypostasis, we cannot put aside the

151
Gregory Nazianzen, or. 31. 14.
152
Didymus, De. Trin. I, 16 (PG 39, 336). See J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 264.
153
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 264-265.
154
G. L. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, 244.
155
Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine, II (Chicago
and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), 82.
61
element of ousia.

Cathrine Mowry LaCugna, a feminist theologian, also criticizes that Zizioulas’

concept of personhood lacks a level of essence. LaCugna emphasizes that the

catholic person is inclusive, and such person expressed the totality of a nature. The

source is that “Jesus is the communion of divine and human, ‘hypostatically’ uniting

two natures ‘without separation, without mingling, without confusion’

(Chalcedon).”156

2.2.3 A different Trinitarian formula from the Cappadocian Fathers

In the Cappadocian Trinitrian theology, being is understood as ousia and

hypostasis (person) simultaneously (mia ousia, treis hypostaseis). “For the

Cappadocians, ‘being’ is a notion we apply to God simultaneously in two senses. It

denotes (a) the what he is of God’s being, and this the Cappadocian Fathers call the

ousia or substance or nature of God; and (b) it refers to the how he is, which they

identify with this personhood.”157 Therefore, there are two kinds of ontological

principles in Cappadocian Trinitrian theology, but only one ‘personal’ principle

for Zizioulas’ theological ontology. Zizioulas describes these two ways to denote

being: “both denote being, but the former refers to the what and the latter to the

how of being. Giving existence or being to the Son by the Father is a matter not of

nature, of the what God is, but of how God is.”158 According to the theology of

Gregory Nazianzen, ‘substance’ means divine oneness or unity, but person of the

Father is the ground of unity of the three persons: “the three have one nature…the

ground of unity being the Father, out of whom and towards whom the subsequent

156
Cathrine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 296.
157
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 125.
158
Ibid., 129.
62
persons are reckoned.”159

The Cappadocian formula, mia ousia, treis hypostaseis, manifests a precise

distinction between ousia and hypostasis and the divine ousia exists hypostatically.

It means that ousia and person are used together in the Trinitarian theology of the

Cappadocian Fathers. In fact, the ousia and person are not contradictory in their

Trinitarian theology. Logically speaking, when ouisa denotes the general, and

person denotes the particular in Trinitarian theology, they are not two elements in

opposition. In fact from the perspective of existence, they express unity in Trinity.

There is a balance when the Cappadocian Fathers uses ousia and person

simultaneously. The only problem is how to understand the concept of ousia. If we

accept it from the angle of nominalism rather than realism, i.e., the essence of God

as an concept conceived by the abstract intellect as existing in each person, the view

of ousia will not threaten the ontology of personhood in Trinitarian theology.

For Zizioulas, based on his understanding of the ontology of personhood, there is

no ousia in his formula of Trinity or Trinitarian theology. It is not exactly the same

with the Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocian Fathers. In his Trinitarian

theology, in order to oppose substantialism, he only emphasizes one ontological

principle, namely, the ‘personal’ principle. In other words, he only considers the

question of how God is. He gives up the question of what God is. For him, “the

Father as ‘cause’ is God, or the God in an ultimate sense, not because he holds the

divine essence and transmits it…but because he is the ultimate ontological

principle of divine personhood.”160

Furthermore, the ultimate ontological principle of personhood involves

ontological otherness and communion in the divine being, while substance means

159
Gregory Nazianzus, Or. 42.15. See Communion and Otherness, 118.
160
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 130.
63
divine oneness. Substance is outside persons. Zizioulas only concentrates on the

one way to denote being in terms of personhood. It directly avoids the emergence of

the Trinity as a matter of transmission of ousia, and it is a transmission of ‘personal’

otherness, i.e., of the how of being.

We can understand John Zizioulas in this way: he is developing the Cappadocian

Trinitarian theology in the modern context. He provides an entirely different way of

approaching the doctrine of the Trinity. As we state in chapter one, the

Cappadocians form the orthodox doctrine of the Trinity among controversies

concerning heresies. They had to protect the equal identity of the Son and the Spirit

with the Father, or their full deity. They used the term homoousios to affirm that the

Son shares one and the same divine nature as the Father. But in the modern

background, John Zizioulas’ purpose is to oppose substantialist understanding of

the doctrine of God and preserves the ontological notion of otherness. Zizioulas

uses God the Father to express One God instead of substance or ousia which

denotes divine oneness. Thus substance is outside persons, and it is not necessary

for Zizioulas to apply the concept of substance or ousia in his Trinitarian formula.

Zizioulas only takes one route to denote the oneness of being in terms of

personhood. Therefore, his theological emphasis is on the causality of Father

which applies a personalist principle instead of a substantialist principle.

According to the Father as personal cause, Zizioulas asserts that the

Cappadocians reversed the Greek situation, for the Trinitarian theology of the

Cappadocian Fathers involves a philosophy in which the particular was not

secondary to being or nature, thus it can be free in an ultimate sense. The absolute

otherness of God’s existence dictates that the approach to God contrasts acutely

with that of the Greeks. Based on it, Zizioulas opposes Western substantialist

theology which is in parallel with Greek substantialism. His formula for Trinity
64
prefers ‘God the Father, three persons’ to ‘one substance, three persons.’ It

leads to great implications for theological anthropology and ecclesiology for our

modern times.

2.3 Further ontological implications of Zizioulas’ unique

understanding of person as the ultimate ontological category -
Taking seriously ‘the Father as cause’
2.3.1 Monas refer to the Father ontologically

Zizioulas expounds the concept of monarchia of the Father in his work.

Monarchia means one arche. It was first employed by theologians to indicate that

there is only one rule in God, amounting to one will, one power, and so on.161

Because the concept was applied not only to God’s economy in the world but to

God in his immanent eternal life, thus the question involves the being of God. Arche

is attached exclusively to the Father in Basil’s theology: “For Father is the one who

has given the beginning of being to the others…Son is the one who has had the

beginning of his being by birth from the other’.162 In Basil’ context, the meaning of

being does not denote ousia but rather hypostasis (person). Gregory Nazianzen

refers to all three persons of the Trinity when he uses the term monarchia in the

early sense of one rule, will and power: “It is, however, a monarchia that is not

limited to one person, for it is possible for unity if at variance with itself to come

into a condition of plurality.”163 Therefore, T. F. Torrance is right in some sense

when he thinks that Gregory Nazianzus’ does not want the monarchy to be limited

to the Father.164 But Gregory refers to the Father when he expresses ontologically

161
Justin, Dial. 1; Tatian, Or. Ad Gr. 14, etc.; see also John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness,
131.
162
Basil, C. Eun. 2.22; see also John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 131-132.
163
Gregory Naz., Theol. Or. 3.2; see also John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 132.
164
See T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 239. “While Gregory
65
with the term monas. This is the text that immediately follows the one just quoted:

“For this reason, the One having moved from the beginning (from all eternity) to a

Dyad, stopped (or rested) in Triad. And this is for us the Father and the Son and the

Holy Spirit. The one as the Begetter and the Emitter, without passion of course and

without reference to time, and not in a corporeal manner, of whom the others are

one of them the begotten and the other the emission.”165.

In his unique understanding of the concept of person, Ziziouals argues that

monas referred to the Father rather than the ousia ontologically in this passage of

Gregory, “If the monas referred to something other than the Father, that is to ousia

or something common to the three persons, we would have to exegete the text in the

following way: ‘The one ousia (monas) moved to a Dyad and finally stopped at the

Triad’. This would mean that from the one ousia came first the two persons together

to which a third one was added finally to make the Trinity.”166 If the monas refers to

the Father, it explains itself: “the one as the Begetter and Emitter, of whom the

others are the one begotten and the other the emission.”167 It is consistent with

Gregory’s thought, because Gregory wants to exclude any understanding of the

Trinity as a derivation from an ‘a-personal something’ in his Theological Oration.

Zizioulas concludes that there is a distinction between the moral sense and the

ontological sense when Gregory uses monarchia: “In the moral sense of unity of

mind, will, and so on, he refers it to the three persons taken together (how could it

be otherwise?). But when he refers to how the Trinity emerged ontologically, he

identifies the monas with the Father.”168

Nazianzen offered much the same teaching as his fellow Cappadocians, he exercised more flexibility
in the use of theological terms…while Gregory nevertheless spoke of the Father as the arche [origin]
and the aitia [cause] in order to secure the unity of the Godhead.”
165
Gregory Naz., Theol. Or. 3.2; see also John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 133.
166
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 133.
167
Ibid., 133.
168
Ibid., 133-134.
66
2.3.2 Stressing person to the extent of excluding ousia

Zizioulas tends to oppose the concepts of person and ousia, and he excludes the

notion of ousia from his ontology of personhood, because he insists that we cannot

know the ousia of God and the Christian truth is identified with life.169 At the same

time, he considers that ouisa means necessity which is opposite to freedom.

Zizioulas contends that the Cappadocian Fathers confer freedom in ontology,

something that Greek philosophy had never done before, when he introduces

Gregory of Nazianzus’s concept of causality: “By not being a matter of

transmission of substance, causality involves freedom in personal being and makes

God the Trinity not a necessary but a free being.”170

Firstly Zizioulas excludes the possibility of truth or knowledge formed from

substantialist approach as the revelation of God. In other words, only the particular

is real, and no universal principle as the essence of God can be grasped: goodness,

righteousness or holiness had been excluded as the concepts of ethics. In Zizioulas’

Christian doctrines, there is only one kind of knowledge, i.e., personal knowledge.

His theology cannot escape from the influences of traditional Eastern traditional

theology. I will analyze his epistemology in chapter seven.

Secondly, because of the lack of the perspective of ousia, it is easy for some

Western theologians to attack his teaching as subordinationism.171 According to

Gregory of Nazianzus, ousia exists in each person which guarantees equality for

each Triune person. When Gregory of Nazianzus discusses the person of the Son,

he refers to ousia simultaneously: “He is called the Son of God, because he and the

Father have the same nature, not only for this reason, he is eternally begotten of the

169
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 56.
170
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 130. See also Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with
God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion, 82-85.
171
We can find the concept of ousia in Zizioulas’s works, but he does not apply this term from an
ontological perspective.
67
Father.”172 Zizioulas consents to this view, but in his ontology of personhood, he

does not apply the notion of ousia to his theological system. Therefore, we may

suspect that it is difficult for Zizioulas’ model of Trinity to serve as a model for

social order as the social Trinity would do.173 In chapter seven, I will discuss this

issue.

Thirdly, philosophically speaking, there is no communion without some degree

of similarity in essence, because the similarity in essence is the presupposition of

communion. When Zizioulas only emphasizes the particularity of the person,

would there be a danger of non-communion?

2.3.3 Causality in Trinity transcending Greek cosmology

Zizioulas has responded to criticism that causality in Trinity entails the danger of

projecting into God subordinationist notions which ‘smack of a cosmological

theology.’174 Zizioulas traces the notion of cause back to the Fathers. The idea of

causality comes from Greek philosophy, and it influenced the Greek Fathers. It is

about the question of how and why something is caused, that is, has come into being.

When the Cappadocian Fathers employed this notion in theology, there are some

innovations with regard to this Greek philosophical concept.

Firstly, the concept of cause was removed from its necessary involvement with

time. The argument is from Oration of Gregory Nazianzen: “The name of the

unoriginate is Father; of that who has had a beginning (arche), Son; and of that

who is together with the beginning, Holy Spirit. And the union of them is the Father,

172
Gregory of Nazianzus, Or., 30.20.
173
Social models of the Trinity, with their very strong emphasis on the personal, relational, and
social aspects of being, they focus on the distinctly practical significance of Trinitarian faith for
Christian life in the world. For example: Leonardo Boff，Trinity and Society, London: Burns &
Oates, 1988.
174
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion, 289.
68
from whom and to whom are referred those who follow…with neither time nor will

nor power instigating”.175 In the same Oration, Gregory Nazianzen says: “Those

who exist from the first cause without time”.176 When causation has been applied

beyond time, Zizioulas claims that cosmological implications need not be read

into the Trinity.

Secondly, though timeless causality can be found in Neoplatonism, the

Cappadocian Fathers reject such substantialist causation, i.e., there is a distinction

between Neoplatonism and the Cappadocian view of causation. Zizioulas concedes

that the Greek idea of causality from its inception was tied up with the dynamic

movement of ousia.177 Though the Cappadocian Fathers used the term physis

(nature) with regard to God, they refused to attach causality to it. Zizioulas

emphasizes that “this is extremely important, and it is overlooked by the critics of

Cappadocian theology. Causal language is permissible, according to the

Cappadocian Fathers, only at the level of personhood, not of substance. It refers to

the how, not to the what of God. Causality is used by these Fathers as a strictly

personalist notion presupposing a clear distinction between person and ousia.”178

2.3.4 Person, Relationality or Communion as central ontological categories of

the Trinity

One key term to understand personhood is communion. Zizioulas’ book Being as

Communion embodies the importance of this ontological concept. For Zizioulas,

communion is an action. Zizioulas describes it in terms of the Eucharistic

experience: “The Eucharistic experience implies that life is imparted and

175
Gregory Naz., Or. 42. 15.
176
Gregory Naz., Or. 31. 10; 5. 14.
177
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 128.
178
Ibid., 128.
69
actualized in an event of communion.”179 Person as relational entity in Trinitarian

theology can be understood through the concept of communion. Zizioulas’

ontology of personhood is a relational ontology. “Relational ontology contains in

its very nature a dimension of transcendence, an openness of being, pointing to

beyond the self, to seeking communion with the Other.”180 It brings about a change

of the idea of truth, as I state in chapter one section 1.4.1. It identifies truth with life

rather than an objective idea like that of the Greek idea of truth. Thus, communion,

relationality and person are all ontological categories. For Zizioulas, the person of

the Father as the ultimate cause renders each person a relational or communal entity

in Trinity, each person has his own ontological integrity because of the person of

Father in his communion and transmission of otherness.

Zizioulas also pinpoints that besides taking the Father as ultimate reality, there

are two alternative views of ultimate reality. One is the Augustinian view that the

three are one because they are relations within the one divine substance; the other is

“what makes the three one, accounting for or expressing their unity, is their

relationship or communion with each other”.181 The latter implies that relationality

or communion is the ultimate ontological category. Later we shall see that the

Alexandrian type of relational ontology represented by T. F. Torrance, Alan J.

Torrance and Colin Gunton effectively take the second alternative understanding of

ontology. And it is this second kind of relational ontology that Zizioulas basically

debates with.

2.3.5 Rendering communion primordial not in conflict with the ontological

179
Ibid., 82.
180
John Zizioulas, “Relational Ontology: Insights from Patristic Thought.” In John Polkinghoren ed.,
The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology (Grand Rapids,
Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Pub., 2010), 155.
181
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 136.
70
ultimacy of the Father

Facing the criticism that “if a particular person [within the Trinity] is regarded

as ontological ultimate, the other persons in communion…will no longer be

safeguarded ontologically”182, Zizioulas argues that the assumption is “a latent

individualism, a deficient integration of communion into the notion of the

person”.183 Zizioulas thinks that there is no inconsistency in rendering communion

primordial while simultaneously upholding ontological ultimacy of the Father.

Zizioulas’ logic is that the person is a relational term. This means that person’s

identity emerges from a relationship or connotes a relationship. “This means that

when we utter the word ‘Father’ we indicate automatically a relationship, that is, a

specific identity which emerges from a relationship or connotes a relationship

184
(schesis).” Zizioulas regards that it is impossible to make the Father

ontologically ultimate without, at the same time, making communion primordial.

2.3.6 Personal ordering in the immanent Trinity not a substantial

subordinationism

Zizioulas argues that there is an ordering in the Trinity: the Father comes first, the

Son second, and the Spirit third in biblical and patristic references to the Holy

Trinity, and the order cannot be reversed –we cannot place any of the other persons

before the Father. Zizioulas quotes Gregory Nazianzen’s words to indicate the

ordering in the immanent Trinity: “[t]he union is the Father from whom and to

whom the ordering of persons runs its course.”185 Zizioulas lists the example of

182
Ibid., 126.
183
Ibid., 127.
184
Ibid., 126.
185
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 138, footnote, 76. Gregory Naz., Or. 42.15; cf. Basil,
C. Eun. 1:20; 3:1: the Son is second to the Father ‘because he came from him’, i.e., not in the
economy but in the immanent Trinity. Gregory of Nyssa insists on this order, too, with regard to the
third place, that he Spirit occupies in the immanent Trinity. See also Zizioulas, Communion and
71
Jesus in Gethsemane or in the desert to indicate an ordering in both the economic

and the immanent Trinity: “the Son’s filial ‘Yes’ to the Father…can only make sense

if it points to the eternal filial relationship between the two persons. It is mainly this

unbroken eternal filial relationship that accounts for the fact that Christ’s humanity;

or rather Christ in his humanity, never sinned, that is, contradicted the will of the

Father, although he was tempted to do so in the desert and before going to the

Cross.”186 According to the Bible and the theology of Gregory Nazianzen as we

stated above, “When all things are subjected to him, then the Son himself will also

be subjected to the one who put all things in subjection under him, so that God may

be all in all.” (1 Corinthians 15.28) Zizioulas claims that every movement in God

begins with the Father and ends with him. Therefore it inevitably established an

ordering in both the economic and the immanent Trinity. 187 Furthermore, the

temporal, moral and functional terms or phrase such as ‘the Father is greater than I’

(John 14.28) must be understood through the ordering in the immanent Trinity

rather than through “a hierarchy of value or importance”188, because Zizioulas

claims that ‘a hierarchy of value’ would be anthropomorphic and cannot be used for

uncreated existence.

Zizioulas claims that causality does not necessarily endanger equality or lead to

subordinationism. Rather, only when divine nature is confused with the divine

person, and the ‘begotten or emission’ has been read as transmission of ousia by the

Father to the other two persons, then the equality of the Trinitarian persons as fully

divine is put at risk. According to Zizioulas, a priori possession of divine nature

by any person would imply the existence of this nature prior to personhood, and

Otherness, 138, footnote 76.

186
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 138.
187
Ibid., 138.
188
Ibid., 139.
72
it will run the risk of inequality of deity in the Trinity. He quotes the words of Basil

to indicate the relation of order and equality: “why is it necessary, if the Spirit is

third in rank, for him to be also third in nature?...Just as the Son is second to the

Father in rank because he derives from him…but not second in nature, for the deity

is one in each of them, so also is the Spirit.”189 In terms of the Cappadocian view

that divine nature does not exist prior to the divine persons, Zizioulas posits that the

Father is greater than the Son not in nature, but in the way (the how) that nature

exists, i.e., in the hypostasization of nature. So Trinitarian ordering refers to the

emergence of persons, and equality refers to the one divine substance. Therefore,

Zizioulas concludes that Trinitarian ordering and causation protect rather than

threaten the equality and fullness of each person’s deity, once that ordering and

causation pertain to personhood rather than to substance or ousia.190

For some critics, they have different Trinitarian theologies. Zizioulas argues that

the crucial point is that many theologians such as V. I. Lossky,191 T. F. Torrance192

and C. Gunton193 dissociate the economic Trinity from God’s eternal being. They

make this ordering refer to the economic Trinity and to soteriology. Then they can

fight Zizioulas’ on the ground of subordinationism in the immanent Trinity. For

example, according to Lossky, in order to avoid subordinationism, it is necessary to

divest the economic properties in relation to the persons of the Trinity.194 Cyril

insists that the Father is said to be greater than the Son only economically, and thus

left no room for subordinationism in the case of Holy Trinity. 195 However,

189
Basil, C. Eun 3.1; see also in John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 140.
190
Ibid., 140.
191
See Vladimir. Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwook, N.Y.: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1974), 92.
192
See T. F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives, 1994, 32.
193
See C. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 196.
194
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1976), 83.
195
See T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1988), 338.
73
Zizioulas distinguishes between the economical Trinity and immanent Trinity but

he does not separate them. So his critics charge that there is subordinationism in

some sense in Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology. But there are problems for the critics

themselves when they separate the economic Trinity from the immanent Trinity. I

will discuss this issue in chapter five.

However, in order to resolve the tension between personal freedom and

subordinationism, a contemporary Orthodox theologian Papanikolaou suggests a

way to resolve the tension between personal freedom and subordinationism. He

suggests that three persons of God are mutually constitutive and there exists mutual

causality. Papanikolaou argues:

This mutually constitutive relationship between communion and otherness means for the
Trinity that the Son causes the Father and the Spirit to be; that the Spirit causes the Father and
the Son to be; as much as the Father causes the Son and the Spirit to be. The identity of each
person is dependent on the other persons. On the level of freedom, each person being the cause
of the existence of the other persons means that each person freely confirms their free will to
exist in communion with other persons, and by so doing, cause the existence of the other as
person.196

By extending the notion of causality to the three persons, it might seem that

Papanikolaou preserves the notion of freedom within the Trinity and avoids

subordinationism. However, according to Zizioulas, the flaw of this theory is that it

would endanger monotheism if the relationship between giver and recipient of

personal otherness were symmetrical, or the Father, the Son and the Spirit are

caused by each other.

2.3.7 Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood transcending necessity to bring about

freedom

Zizioulas constructs his theological ontology on an ontological concept of

196
Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 151.
74
‘person’ rather than ‘essence’. In other words, the concept of person is based on

‘how God is’, the divine modes of existence. Essence expresses “what God is”.

Zizioulas’ ontological principle is the priority of person over nature. For Ziziouals,

‘essence’ means ontological necessity, and ‘person’ signifies ontological freedom.

One major purpose of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood is to affirm the

ontological freedom of God and man. It means that the ontological freedom of God

and man are not limited by the necessity of the substance in Zizioulas’ thoughts. He

writes: “The manner [person] in which God exercises His ontological freedom, that

precisely which makes Him ontologically free, is the way in which He transcends

and abolishes the ontological necessity of the substance by being God as Father,

that is, as He who ‘begets’ the Son and ‘brings forth’ the Spirit.” 197 In his

ontological principle, the relation between person and nature is antithetical. But the

relationship between person and nature in a human person is dialectical:

“Creaturely necessities do not inhibit creaturely personhood; in their proper place

and time they enhance it.” 198 This means that the person-nature relationship is

mainly about freedom-necessity in the ontological sense. If we locate

freedom-necessity on the ethical level, we will easily misunderstand Zizioulas’

thought as anti-essence or anti-ethics. We will again explore these problems later.

2.4 Preliminary evaluation of Zizioulas ontological proposal

In view of the remarkable proposal by Zizioulas, some theologians accept the

conceptual revolution, but they oppose the Father as cause. However, the most

trenchant criticism on Zizioulas ontological proposal does not come from

theologians of substantialist ontology, but from theologians who equally stress the

197
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 44.
198
Douglas Farrow, ‘Person and Nature: The Necessity-Freedom Dialectic in John Zizioulas’, in
Douglas H. Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 121.
75
ontology of relationality.

2.4.1 Criticisms of the monarchia of the Father as cause

The monarchy (monarchia) of the Father indicating the one arche in divine

existence has been criticized by many theologians.199 The main criticism is that

giving preeminence to the Father would threaten the equality of Trinitarian persons;

the second criticism is whether taking Father as cause of the Trinity would endanger

Zizioulas’ identification of being and communion. The third one is that causality as

a cosmological category is not a proper category in Trinitarian theology. Now that

Zizioulas idea of ontological revolution seems to promote this divine Monarchia of

the Father, Zizioulas has to face these criticisms. The following section will discuss

these.

Many theologians offer criticisms involving the Father as personal cause. For

example, T. F. Torrance opposes the view of the monarchy of the Father on different

theological grounds: “In the Cappadocian framework this meant that procession is

regarded as taking place between different modes of existence or relations of origin,

which is hardly satisfactory for it falls short of affirming the homoousion of the

Spirit.” 200 Torrance thinks that Gregory Nazianzen’ view of causality was not

limited to the Father: “Gregory Nazianzen felt strongly that to subordinate any of

the three divine Persons to another was to overthrow the doctrine of the Trinity. He

was thus returning to the more unified conception of the divine arche advocated by

Athanasius, who had also rejected any idea of degrees of Deity in the Trinity.”201

199
According to Gregory Nazianzen, in the ontological sense, monarchia means unity of personal
derivation. The monas is identified with the Father. In the moral sense, monarchia signifies unity of
rule. It is shared equally by the three persons. See his Theol. Or. 3.2 or John Zizioulas, Communion
and Otherness, 119, footnote 21.
200
Thomas. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh:
T&T Clark, 1996), 186.
201
T. F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
76
Torrance particularly cites from Cyril and Athanasius to oppose the primacy of the

Father, since there is a danger of an ontological subordinationism, with the Son and

the Spirit at least appearing to be less truly God than the Father. In fact, the two

Alexandrians tended to over-stress the equality of the persons in their age of

heretical context. Their views are the main arguments for Torrance to criticize the

primacy of the Father.202

For Alan Torrance, there are some problems with Zizioulas’ concept of causality:

The first problem is that there is a contradiction between ‘the Father as cause’ and

‘Holy Trinity’ as ontologically primordial: “If the Trinity derives from a causal act

of the Father, is the ‘concept’ of the ‘Holy Trinity’ really being conceived as

ontologically primordial? Does the exclusively primordial reality not actually

become the person of the Father?”

The second problem is that causality threatens personal equality of the Trinity:

“Zizioulas commits theology by these means to ‘a kind of subordination of the Son

to the Father’ – even though he might not be ‘obliged to downgrade the Logos into

something created.”203

The third problem is that Alan Torrance regards that the Cappadocian projection

of causal notions into the internal life of God would seem to be potentially

damaging to Zizioulas’ identification of being and communion: “It obviated the

view that the ultimate ontological category is a ‘structure of communion existing by

itself’.”204

The fourth problem is that ‘causality’ is a category of cosmology: it cannot be

integrated with the Eucharistic experience that Zizioulas perceives as the context of

1994), 30.
202
See T. F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement, 30-35.
203
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 293.
204
Ibid.
77
Trinitarian articulation.205 This means that ‘causality’ is not a proper category in

Trinitarian theology.

I will discuss the question of T. F. Torrance and the first question of Alan

Torrance which involve the ontology of relationality in the coming sections. The

second question of Alan Torrance involves an issue of subordinationism. The

answer can be found in 2.3.6 “Personal ordering in the immanent Trinity not a

substantial subordinationism”. The third criticism involves the relation between

person and communion. The reply can be acquired in part 2.3.5 “Rendering

communion primordial not in conflict with the ontological ultimacy of the Father”.

The fourth asks whether ‘causality’ is a proper notion for Trinitarian theology. In

part 2.3.3 “Causality in Trinity transcending Greek cosmology”, according to

Zizioulas, causality is a proper category when we apply it on the personal level.

2.4.2 Criticism of Zizioulas ontology – Alexandrian ontology of relationality

versus Cappadocian ontology of relationality

Besides Zizioulas, T. F. Torrance represents an alternative way to explore the

being of God, i.e., a relational ontology in Alexandrian Trinitarian theology

vis-à-vis a relational ontology of personhood in Cappadocian tradition as

propounded by Zizioulas. We have seen their criticisms of Zizioulas over the

Cappadocian notion of the Father as cause; now we turn to more ontological issues

in their criticisms of Zizioulas.

Torrance’s famous book The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three

Persons constructs a Trinitarian theology in the Alexandrian tradition. His view is

based on Athanasius and Cyril of Alexandria. He criticizes the Cappadocian

Fathers:

205
Ibid., 290-292.
78
 We recall that the conflation of these two senses by the Cappadocian Fathers gave rise to
serious difficulties, not least in connection with their conception of the Unity of God as
deriving ‘from the Person of the Father, thereby replacing the Nicene formula ‘from the
Being of the Father.’ In the Cappadocian framework this meant that procession is regarded
as taking place between different modes of existence or relations of origin, which is hardly
satisfactory for it falls short of affirming the homoousion of the Spirit.206

As we have pointed out above Torrance writes: “Gregory Nazianzen felt strongly

that to subordinate any of the three divine Persons to another was to overthrow the

doctrine of the Trinity. He was thus returning to the more unified conception of the

divine arche advocated by Athanasius, who had also rejected any idea of degrees of

Deity in the Trinity.”207

T. F. Torrance asserts the superiority of the Alexandrian tradition:

It was upon the Athanasian-Epiphanian basis that classical Christian theology developed into
its flowering in the great work of Cyril of Alexandria. In our day it has been upon the
Athanasian-Epiphanian-Cyriline basis, together with the Trinitarian teaching of Gregory
Nazianzen who insisted that the Monarchia may not be limited to one Person, that doctrinal
agreement on the doctrine of the Holy Trinity has been reached between Orthodox and
Reformed Churches.”208

Besides T. F. Torrance, Alan J. Torrance and Colin Gunton also propose

criticisms in the same vein.

Alan Torrance queries Zizioulas: “it seems to us that he fails to offer sufficiently

compelling arguments as to why it should be of ‘incalculable importance’ that we

do not conceive of the intra-divine communion of the Triunity as the ground of all

that is, that is, as sufficient in itself and as indeed ‘capable’ of existing ‘by

206
Thomas. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons, 186.
207
T. F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspective: Toward Doctrinal Agreement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1994), 30.
208
Thomas. F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, One Being Three Persons, 185. Torrance
argues that the formulation of the doctrine of the Trinity at the Council of Constantinople’s
development did not follow the line advocated by the Cappadocians in grounding the unity of the
Godhead in the Person of the Father as the unique and exclusive Principle of the Godhead, but
reverted to the doctrine of the Son as begotten of the Being of the Father and made a similar
affirmation of the Holy Spirit. It is reaffirmation of Nicene theology which operated on the basis laid
down by Athanasius. See 182.
79
itself’.”209 Alan Torrance is consistent with T. F. Torrance when they cite Cyril’s

opinion to safeguard the ultimacy of personal communion over against monarchian

conceptions.

To quote T. F. Torrance again, ‘Cyril’s conception of the interrelation of the three

perfect, coequal, coeternal, enhypostatic Persons through their wholly reciprocal

indwelling and containing of one another, in which they are inconfusedly united and

inseparably distinguished, was very different, for it carried within it the combined

notion of mia ousia and mia arche.’210

Gunton also criticizes that while causality preserves the due priority of the Father

in the Godhead, it is not an adequate theology for the mutual constitution of Father,

Son, and Spirit:

Whatever the priority of the Father, it must not be conceived in such a way as to detract from
the fact that all three persons are together the cause of mutual and reciprocal constitution. Thus
the Father is what he is not only because he begets the Son, but also because the Son responds
in the way made known in his obedience as incarnate, and so can be understood to be the one
who shares in the constitution of the being of God by means of his eternal response of
obedience and love.211

Such the ontology of relationality based on the Alexandrian tradition, is different

from the ontology of the Cappadocian Fathers. On such notion of ‘intra-divine

communion’ as the ultimate reality in God, Zizioulas points out that though the

view “appears to be different from that of making substance the ultimate reality, yet

the difference is actually very little and the difficulties it presents are exactly the

same”.212. It means that they all create the ‘fourth’ reality behind the three persons.

He responds to their criticisms from three aspects.

Firstly, Zizioulas claims that it will violate the biblical monotheism of ‘God the
209
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation, 293.
210
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation, 294. The quotation is taken from T. F. Torrance, The Trinitarian Faith, 340.
211
Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1997), 196.
212
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness. 134.
80
Father’ if anything beyond the Father is regarded as ultimate reality. He quotes Karl

Rahner’s view which sustains “God is Father” in the Bible.213

[The Augustinian-Western conception of the Trinity] begins with the one God, the one divine
essence as a whole, and only afterward does it see God as three in persons. Of course, great care
is then taken and must be taken, not to set up this divine ‘essence’ itself as a ‘fourth’ reality
pre-existing in the three persons. The Bible and the Greeks would have us start from the one
unoriginate God, who is already Father even when nothing is known as yet about generation
and spiration. He is known as the one unoriginate hypostasis which is not positively conceived
as ‘absolute’ even before it is explicitly known as relative.214

Secondly, Zizioulas questions the ‘oneness’ or ‘unity’ of the three divine persons

(in the co-emergence and co-existence of the three persons) as the ultimate reality

in God. The one God is not the Father but the unity of Father, Son and Spirit in

their co-inherence or inter-relatedness. The problem is that this ontology of

relationship or communion has ruled out ontological derivation, and replaced it

with ontological co-emergence or ‘co-inherence’. It will not be in accordance with

the creedal and biblical expression ‘from the Father’, because ‘from the Father’

means an ontological derivation. In this case, otherness of the persons in Trinity “is

not derived from a particular Other but is itself the ultimate explanation of

itself.”215

Thirdly, Zizioulas argues that relationality as the ultimate reality is wrong,

because “if the one God is not a particular hypostasis, our prayer cannot be

addressed to the one God but only to the Trinity or to the ‘Triunity.’ ”216. Logically,

the one God is left out of our prayer. Zizioulas points out that according to the Bible,

in praying to the Trinity, we are ultimately praying to the one God, the Father. And

he provides two biblical verses as argument, “then comes the end, when he hands

over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every

213
see also John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 134.
214
Karl Rahner, The Trinity (London: Burns & Oates, 1986), 17.
215
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness. 135.
216
Ibid., 136.
81
authority and power” (1 Corinthians 15.24); and “for through him both of us have

access in one Spirit to the Father” (Ephesians 2.18).

In response to Gunton’s ‘three persons are together the cause of mutual and

reciprocal constitution’, Zizioulas thinks that it will threaten the coincidence of the

One and the many in divine being:

In other words, had the Three been simultaneously the ontological cause of divine being,
there would be no ‘One’ in God, but ultimately only ‘Many’ – unless a unitive concept such
as ‘Triunity’ is introduced, which would imply something like a fourth principle in divine
being. Equally, if the One were not one of the Three, this would not allow for the Many to be
constitutive of being. The ontological monarchy of the Father, that is, of a relational being,
and the attachment of ontological causation to him, serve to safeguard the coincidence of the
One and the many in divine being, a coincidence that raises otherness to the primary state of
being without destroying its unity and oneness.217

It seems that Zizioulas has provided plausible replies to his critics, and the

criticisms of the Father as cause are at least not conclusive.

2.4.3 Further analysis of the true Cappadocian intention

When T. F. Torrance and other theologians criticize the view of causality of the

Cappadocian Fathers, and Zizioulas responds to their criticisms, they ignore two

issues which we should make clear.

Firstly, Gregory Nazianzen’s person as cause does not deny the homousion of

three persons. I think both T. F. Torrance and John Zizioulas overlook this issue.

According to Zizioulas’ introduction to the ontological revolution and his

understanding of the ontology of personhood, it is difficult for us to know the

relationship between the Council of Nicea (325) and the Council of Constantinople

(381): whether or not the Cappadocian Fathers safeguard the homoousios when

they posit the Father as the ultimate ontological principle. Zizioulas gives priority

to freedom when he introduces Gregory Nazianzen’s concept of causality: “By not

217
Ibid., 35
82
being a matter of transmission of substance, causality involves freedom in personal

being and makes God the Trinity not a necessary but a free being.”218

However, Zizioulas does not highlight the real purpose of Gregory Nazianzen,

namely, his intention to affirm the Nicene faith. In order to preserve the idea of

homoousios of the first Ecumenical Council and oppose the attack of Arianism,

Gregory distinguishes the concept of hypostasis (person) from ousia and insists

that the Father and Son are relational entities. The difference between them is the

origin and the relation. Therefore, the difference is in ‘person’ or hypostasis and the

ousia of the three persons is one and the same. Thus, he insists on the view of

homoousios of Athanasius. It means that he safeguards the Nicene Creed. As it is

said by Kelly:
The climax of the developments we have been studying was the affirmation of the Nicene
faith at the council of Constantinople in 381. At this the consubstantiality of the Spirit as well
as of the Son was formally endorsed. The theology which prevailed, as exemplified by the
great Cappadocians themselves and by teachers like Didymus the Blind and Evagrius
Ponticus, may be fairly described as in substance that of Athanasius. It is true that their angle
of approach was somewhat different from his. Emerging from the Homoousian tradition, it
was natural that they should make the three hypostases, rather than the one divine substance,
their starting-point.219

Secondly, I think that T. F. Torrance’s criticism of Gregory Nazianzen breaks

away from his historical context. Athanasius’ homoousion could not deal with the

problem of Arius completely. Cyril of Alexandria (A.D. 376-444) lived mainly in

5th century, and he was primarily concerned with Christology, dealing with a series

of attacks against the Novatians. It means we cannot just understand Gregory

Nazianzen’s Trinitarian theology in terms of Athanasius and Cyril. We should

locate the importance of the Cappadocian Fathers’ view of causality in a

theological and philosophical context.

218
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 130.
219
J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, 263-264.
83
 Gregory Nazianzen in his theological orations discussed the question of Arians

and Eunomians: whether the Son is the essence of God or the energy of God. This is

a dilemma: if the Church replied that the Son is the essence of God, it would not

have been possible to distinguish between the Son and the Father; if the answer is

the energy, they would have reduced the Son to a creature. Gregory proposes a third

way to answer Eunomians’ question: the Son is neither essence nor energy, but an

identity that can be described only in terms of his relationships. The ‘Father’ and

‘Son’ are categories of relationship and persons. The concept of person is not an

essence, i.e., not a being in itself.

On the other hand, the importance of the above view was a response to the

Platonists, particularly in Plotinus’ system of emanations, which proposes that the

procession from one to another is a natural evolution outwards from the One, in a

process of degeneration or disintegration. Zizioulas considers that Gregory

Nazianzen’s opinion eliminates the Platonic image of God as a crater overflowing

with love, for “this analogy makes the Father’s begetting of the Son involuntary,

which would suggest that the entire Trinity exists as a natural and necessary

consequence of the essence that God is.”220 Gregory Nazianzen’s argument is: “for

we shall not venture to speak of ‘an overflow of goodness,’ as one of the Greek

philosophers dared to say…let us not ever look on this generation as involuntary,

like some natural overflow, hard to be retained, and by no means befitting our

conception of Deity.”221

Therefore, T. F. Torrance, who asserts the superiority of the

Athanasian-Epiphanian-Cyriline tradition over the Trinitarian teaching of Gregory

Nazianzen, ignores some important theological and philosophical problems that the

220
Ibid., 61.
221
Gregory Naz., Theol. Or. 3.2.
84
Cappadocian Fathers have treated with their ontology of personhood. On the other

hand, although Zizioulas is right in expounding the Cappadocian view of the Father

as cause, nevertheless he may have understressed the continuity of the Cappodician

Fathers with Athanasius’ theology. The overall effect of the Cappadocian Fathers’

theology is that the ontological understanding of personhood is deepened and

although they affirmed Athanasius’ concept of homoousion they did not allow it to

strengthen a substantialist understanding of the Triune God, but uses the concept of

hypostasis to inaugurate a new ontology of personhood that would have far

reaching implications as we are going to investigate in the following chapters. We

must bear in mind that this ontology of personhood has to repudiate the

substantialist understanding of the Godhead, as well as humanhood, that has

pervaded Western theology until now.

2.4.4 Defense of the Father as cause – Calvin and others

In fact, Zizioulas is fully aware that in the East, since Origen, there is

subordinationism in Trinitarian theology. In making the Father the ultimate reason

for existence, speaks Zizioulas, “theology accepted a kind of subordination of the

Son to the Father without being obliged to downgrade Logos into something

created. But this was possible only because the Son’s otherness was founded on the

same substance”.222 It is obvious that the Cappadocian Fathers and John Zizioulas

continue the Eastern traditional Monarchianism of the Father which was criticized

as ‘subordinationism’ by some Western theologians. But the Cappadocian Fathers

separate hypostases from ousia, and identify hypostases with person. That means

Gregory accepts a kind of subordination which is different from Arianism. Gregory

Nazianzen writes: “When we admit that, in respect of being the Cause, the Father is

222
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 89.
85
greater than the Son, they (Arianism) should assume the premise that He is the

Cause by Nature, and then deduce the conclusion that He is greater by Nature

also.”223

When we reflect on the Cappodocian notion of ‘the Father as cause’, it may be

beneficial to consider the famous Reformed theologian Calvin, for Calvin supports

the monarchy of the Father. Many theologians argue that the main theological

influence on Calvin was Augustine, but it is evident that Calvin appeals to the

writings of Gregory Nazianzen to understand the divine as a personal God. He pays

more attention to each personhood in Trinity. 224 Calvin rejects the theological

method of the Latin schoolmen that begin with the abstract question ‘what God is’.

Instead he begins with that of ‘what kind of God is he’.225 For Calvin, the relation

between ‘person’ and ‘essence’ cannot be separated.

When we confess to believe in one God, under the name of God is understood a single, simple
essence, in which we comprehend three persons, or hypostases. Therefore, whenever the name
of God is mentioned without particularization, there are designated no less the Son and the
Spirit than the Father; but where the Son is joined to the Father, then the relation of the two
enters in; and so we distinguish among the persons. But because the peculiar qualities in the
persons carry an order within them, e.g., in the Father is the beginning and the source, so often
as mention is made of the Father and the Son together, or the Spirit, the name of God is
peculiarly applied to the Father. In this way, unity of essence is retained, and a reasoned order
226
is kept, which yet takes nothing away from the deity of the Son and the Spirit.

Calvin gives primacy to the biblical revelation of God as Father, Son and Holy

Spirit. At the same time he believes the orthodox expression of the Trinity: One

God in Three persons and Three persons in One God.227 Calvin used the words of

Gregory of Nazianzen to express the relation between one and three: “I cannot think

of the one without quickly being encircled by the splendor of the three; nor can I

223
Gregory Naz., Or. Theol. 29.15.
224
For example, T. F. Torrance. J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I, 13. 17.
225
Calvin, Institute I. 2. 2.
226
J. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, I. 13.20.
227
Ibid., I 554, 6, 21.
86
discern the three without being straightway carried back to the one.”228

Calvin begins with the distinction of persons in God, because to know God is to

know him precisely as three persons, 229 and it was only the person of Christ

revealed by the Son of the Father distinguishing him from the Father and the

Spirit.230 He accepts the Greek term prosopon, and its Latin translation persona, as

equivalent to hypostasis used in this way, and agrees to the use of subsistentia as a

literal translation of hypostasis. 231 It means that Calvin affirms the ontological

otherness among the three persons. He cites the words: “the stamp of the Father’s

hypostasis” [Hebrews 1:3]. By this language Calvin affirms the distinctiveness of

the Persons of the Trinity: “from this we also easily ascertain the Son’s hypostasis,

which distinguishes him from the Father. The same reasoning applies to the Holy

Spirit…”232

Calvin distinguishes between hypostasis and essence: hypostasis refers to being

in relation, but essence refers to being in itself. Calvin argues that this distinction

within the utter unity of God with different persons is not contradictory. It is in this

sense that Calvin speaks of the three divine persons in the one being of God, who

are what they are as Father, Son, and Holy Spirit in their consubstantial relations

with one another.233

In modern theology, there are also some Western theologians who maintain the

monarchy of the Father. For example, Moltmann avers that the monarchy of the

Father does not threaten the equality of persons in Trinity through the concept of

perichoresis, i.e., subordinationism in the doctrine of the Trinity is avoided:

228
Ibid., I, 13, 17.
229
Ibid., I. 13.2
230
Ibid., I. 13.16.
231
Ibid., I.13. 2.
232
Ibid., I. 13. 2
233
T. F. Torrance, Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark,
1994), 28.
87
 It is true that the Trinity is constituted with the Father as starting point, inasmuch as he is
understood as being ‘the origin of the Godhead’. But this ‘monarchy of the Father’ only
applies to the constitution of the Trinity. It has no validity within the eternal circulation of the
divine life, and none in the perichoretic unity of the Trinity. Here the three Persons are equal;
234
they live and are manifested in one another and through one another.

Karl Rahner also supports the monarchy of the Father:

The Bible and the Greeks would have us start from the one unoriginate God, who is already
Father even when nothing is known as yet about generation and spiration. He is known as the
one unoriginate hypostasis which is not positively conceived as ‘absolute’ even before it is
explicitly known as relative. But the medieval-Latin starting point happens to be different. And
thus one may believe that Christian theology too may and should put a treatise on the one God
before the treatise on the triune God.235

The other theologian who supports ‘the monarchy of the Father’ is Catherine

LaCugna. In her book God for Us, she argues that subordination in the economy

does not entail subordination at the level of ‘theologia’. “The Cappadocian solution

effectively precludes ontological subordinationism while allowing for an economic

subordination, since Son and Spirit in the economy are sent by the Father who

sends. Thus subordination in the economy is maintained alongside a strict

nonsubordination at the level of ‘theology’.”236

All the above theological voices support Zizioulas’ claim that acceptance of the

monarchy of the Father does not necessarily commit one to an objectionable form

of subordinationism.

234
Jürgen Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom: The Doctrine of God (Minneapolis, Fortress
Press, 1993), 175-176.
235
Karl Rahner, The Trinity, 17.
236
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991), 70.
88
 Part II

From God’s Person to Human Person

89
 Chapter Three

The person of the Father as the ontological ground for

the personhood of human beings

This chapter will answer a question: what is it that causes particular human

beings to be? In Greek philosophy, the particular is caused by the general. “In other

words, particular human beings are in so far as they participate either in the ideal

‘human being’ or in the ‘nature’ of humanity, its species.”237 In contrast with the

Greek view, Zizioulas thinks that the cause of being is the particular, not the general.

According to the ontology of personhood in Trinitarian theology, Zizioulas

develops the implications of his ‘personal’ ontology for anthropology. God’s

being is caused not by divine substance but by the Father. Similarly, when a human

being exists as God himself exists, he takes on God’s ‘ways of being’. The reason is

that “God created humankind in his image”. (Genesis 1. 27) Therefore, the

anthropology in terms of the personalist ontology includes two aspects

simultaneously: the Father is the ultimate giver of personhood, and each single

person acquires personal otherness, i.e., absolute particularity in Christ, i.e., the

particular is raised to the level of ontological primacy.

I will describe the anthropological implications of Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood: the meaning of ‘personhood’, the being of God as the ontological

ground for the being of man, and our transformation from biological to ecclesial

hypostasis. It also changes the traditional views of personhood and soteriology

which I will discuss in chapters six and seven.

3.1 The ontological meaning of personhood

237
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 104.
90
 Based on the Cappadocian fathers, the concept of person (and therefore

personhood) is a relational and ontological category and does not refer primarily to

a self-conscious or individual rational being in terms of a being-in-itself or

being-by-itself.

3.1.1 Ekstasis and hypostasis as two basic aspects of personhood

‘Person’ as an ontological concept does not mean ‘substance’ or ‘nature’ but is a

‘mode of existence’. The concept of personhood implies two things simultaneously:

particularity and communion. Communion is explained by Zizioulas with liturgical

or sacramental approach, 238 especially the Eucharistic approach which will be

explained in the next section. Zizioulas describes the concept of personhood in

terms of two terms: ekstasis and hypostasis. Ekstasis was used in the mystical

writings of Pseudo-Dionysius, Maximus, etc. The term ek-stasis means a

movement towards communion, which leads to a transcendence of the boundaries

of oneself: “The person in its ecstatic character reveals its being in a catholic, that

is, integral and undivided, way, and thus in its being ecstatic it becomes hypostatic,

that is, the bearer of its nature in its totality.”239 Hypostasis means the particular

being. Zizioulas writes: “While ekstasis signifies that a person is a revelation of

truth by the fact of being in communion, hypostasis signifies that in and through his

communion a person affirms his own identity and his particularity; he ‘supports his

own nature’ in a particular and unique way.” 240

Therefore, the concept of ‘person’ is fundamentally different from the

individualization of ‘nature’ or, more importantly, ‘personality’.241 First, ‘nature’ or

238
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 101.
239
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 213.
240
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 106.
241
Aquinas is the representative proponent of ‘the individualization of ‘nature’’. See Joseph Bobik,
translation and interpretation, Aquinas on Being and Essence (Notre Dame: University of Notre
91
‘personality’ exists in itself, but a person is constituted within his relationships and

the person cannot be conceived of oneself as a static entity. Moreover, nature is

about qualities or capacities of any kind: biological, social or moral; personality

means a complex of natural, psychological or moral qualities which can be

contained in the individual, especially in individual consciousness. On the contrary,

being a person is basically different from being an individual or personality, for

personhood is about “hypostasis, that is, the claim to uniqueness in the absolute

sense of the term, and this cannot be guaranteed by reference to sex or function or

role, or even cultivated consciousness of the ‘self’ and its psychological

experiences, since all of these can be classified, thus representing qualities shared

by more than one being and not pointing to absolute uniqueness.”242 Finally, the

‘person’ cannot exist in fallen existence, but ‘nature’ or ‘personality’ can, because

nature is in terms of “this individualized and individualizing Adam in us”.243

Before the fourth century, when the notion of hypostasis was identical with that

of ‘substance’, these two words are the same in usage denoting the ultimate

particular being in itself since Aristotle. But when the term hypostasis ceased to

denote ‘substance’ and became synonymous with that of `person’ in theology, the

significance for anthropology is revolutionary: “for the identification of hypostasis

not with ousia but with personhood means that the ontological question is not

answered by pointing to the self-existent, to a being as it is determined by its own

Dame Press, 1965), 59-107. The essence of man is a composite substance. The composite
substances are form and matter. For man, form and matter signify soul and body. It means we cannot
say that either one of them alone is itself the essence. (59) Humanity or essence signifies that by
which man is man: “Humanity, for example, though composed, is not man; it must be received into
something which is designated matter.” (107) Matter is the principle of individuation. It is
designated matter which constitutes the principle of individuation. “The principle of individuation is
not matter taken in just any way whatever, but only designated matter…such matter is not placed in
the definition of man as man, but it would be placed in the definition of Socrates, if Socrates had a
definition. Rather, it is nondesignated matter which is placed in the definition of man; for this bone
and this flesh are not placed in the definition of man, but bone and flesh absolutely.” (75)
242
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 111.
243
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 107.
92
boundaries, but to a being which in its ekstasis breaks through these boundaries in

a movement of communion.”244 Therefore, Zizioulas claims that the ontological

identity is to be found ultimately not in ‘substance’, but only in a being which is free

from the boundaries of the ‘self’. Because “these boundaries render it subject to

individualization, comprehension, combination, definition, description and use,

such a being free from these boundaries is free, not in a moral but in an ontological

sense, that is, in the way it is constituted and realized as a being.”245 Furthermore,

since hypostasis is identical with person, not with substance, it exists not in its

‘self-existence’ but in communion. Therefore, communion does not threaten

personal particularity; it is constitutive of it. Thus Zizioulas proposes an

important idea for a `personal’ being: the coincidence of otherness and

communion.
The mystery of being a person lies in the fact that here otherness and communion are not in
contradiction but coincide. Truth as communion does not lead to the dissolving of the diversity
of beings into one vast ocean of being, but to the affirmation of otherness in and through love.
The difference between this truth and that of ‘nature in itself’ lies in the following: while the
latter is subject to fragmentation, individualization, conceptualization, comprehension, etc., the
person is not. So in the context of personhood, otherness is incompatible with division.246

3.1.2 Three characteristics of the concept of personhood

For Zizioulas, there are three characteristics in his concept of personhood.

(a) The person is otherness in communion and communion in otherness. Because

the person is an identity that emerges through relationship in terms of Trinitarian

theology, Zizioulas analyzes the concept of person through “I-Thou” relationship:

“It is an ‘I’ that can exist only as long as it relates to a ‘thou’ which affirms its

existence and its otherness. If we isolate the ‘I’ from the ‘thou’ we lost not only its

244
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 214.
245
Ibid., 214.
246
John Ziziouilas, Being as Communion, 106-107.
93
otherness but also its very being; it simply cannot be without the other. This is what

distinguishes a person from an individual.”247

(b) Personhood is freedom. Freedom is the basic presupposition for the constitution

of personhood. Furthermore, this freedom is not freedom from the other but

freedom for the other. “In its anthropological significance, as well as in its

theological significance, personhood is inconceivable without freedom; it is the

freedom of being other.” 248 Zizioulas distinguishes the concept of ‘other’ from

‘different’: ‘different’ can be understood in the sense of qualities (clever, beautiful,

holy, etc.), which is not what the person is about: to be a person implies not simply

the freedom to have different qualities, but mainly the freedom simply to be

yourself. Zizioulas’ purpose is to show that “a person is not subject to norms and

stereotypes; a person cannot be classified in any way; a person’s uniqueness is

absolute.”249

(c) Personhood is creativity. Creativity is a consequence of freedom. Because

freedom is not from but for someone or something other than ourselves, thus

freedom makes the person go outside and beyond the boundaries of the ‘self’. It can

be expressed by the concept of ‘ekstasis’ which means a movement of affirmation

of the other. The affirmation of the other is not limited to the ‘other’ that already

exists, but wants to affirm an ‘other’. This is the totally free grace of the person.

This is the creativity which is defined by Zizioulas: “Just as God created the world

totally as free grace, so the person wants to create its own ‘other’.”250 A person as a

creator brings about a totally other identity as an act of freedom and communion.

247
Ibid., 9.
248
Ibid., 9.
249
Ibid.
250
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 10.
94
3.2 The being of God as the ontological ground for the being of
humans
Zizioulas claims the being of God as the ontological ground for the being of

human: “Because we are made in the image of God we can see intimations of this in

our own relationships. Because man is made in the image of God, we can find

analogies between God and man, that are based in the relationships of the persons

of God. The doctrine of the Trinity gives us the truth of our own existence.”251

Absolute uniqueness is constituted by an unbroken ontological relationship. It

acquires tremendous existential significance when placed in the context of human

being. Personal identity is guaranteed by relationship with God, thus the identity

would not be isolated: “Personal identity is totally lost if isolated, for its

ontological condition is relationship.”252 The condition to form hypostasis is that

the hypo-static and the ek-static have to coincide. The Father as cause, a particular

Christology, and a particular pneumatology have been provided by John Zizioulas

as the conditions for the being of man.

3.2.1 The Father as personal cause for personal existence

Because the concept of personhood is related also to the idea of divine causality,

the Father being the cause of personhood in God’s being can throw light on our own

personal existence. Zizioulas argues for the significance of ‘causality’ from three

aspects of our existence as persons.253

Firstly, it means that a person is always a gift from someone. It affirms that

personal existence is not self-existent, self-sufficient or self-explicable. It cannot

attribute one’s own personal identity to oneself or to a-personal something. The

251
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 64.
252
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 112.
253
Ibid., 141.
95
notion of self-existence is a substantialist notion. Causality in Trinitarian

existence reveals to us a personhood which is constituted by love. Ontologically,

persons are the outcome of love and freedom, and they owe their being who they

are, their distinctive otherness as persons, to other person(s). Persons are givers and

recipients of personal identity.

Secondly, divine causality means that personal otherness is not symmetrical

but a-symmetrical. Thus otherness is hierarchical, since we are not ‘other’ by

ourselves but by someone else, who in this way is ‘higher’, that is, ontologically

‘prior’ to us, the giver of our otherness. There are three important points of view

about this a-symmetry: (a) Hierarchical ordering is inherent in personhood, all

personal relations being ontologically a-symmetrical. (b) The persons are

ontologically free and fully equal. A-symmetry does not exclude equality.

Zizioulas writes: “A-symmetry is not incompatible with equality.”254 (c) All others

owe their being to the person who in his own being generates otherness, that is, the

Father. This makes the Father the ultimate giver for human personhood, because

the Father’s personhood is not given or caused by someone else, but is the

uncaused cause of all personhood.

The idea of a-symmetry is important to preclude the logical possibility that the

ultimate giver, the Father, receives his personhood from those who receive it from

him. Reciprocity or a symmetrical ‘personal’ relationship here will threaten

monotheism.255 Zizioulas regards this as the conclusion for personal existence

from an analysis of the Cappadocian theology of the Father as cause.

3.2.2 Christ is the way to personal existence

254
Ibid., 144.
255
Ibid., 144.
96
 The realization of the drive of man towards personal ontology cannot be

provided by created being. Christ is the way to fulfilling the human drive to

personhood. There are three conditions of a Christology for human existence.

(a) Christology is one from above, not from below. It means the nature of Christ

is not prior to his person. Chalcedon made an important ontological statement in

speaking of the hypostasis of the Son as the only personal identity of Christ. Man

acquires personal identity and ontological particularity only by basing his being on

the Father-Son relationship in which nature is not primary to the particular being. It

means the fact that being is ‘given’.

(b) In Christ, the particular is raised to the level of ontological primacy, and the

general exists only in and through the particular. The ‘who’ of Christ is the Son. The

two natures give their qualities to the personal identity without making the identity

depend on these qualities. However, in Greek philosophy, our identity ultimately

depends on these qualities. In Christ, the aim does not exclude natural qualities

from the identity of ‘I’ –but ‘enhypostasizes’ these qualities. So the cause of being is

the particular, not the general man. It means that our identities do not ultimately

depend on nature, but on hypostasis or personhood.

(c) Christ exists in the personal relationship with the Father. The salvation for the

world is the union of the created with the uncreated. This union is not mechanical or

magical synthesis of two natures, but through the communion with the triune God:

the incarnation is a movement from the Father back to the Father, through Christ in

the Holy Spirit. This model of union provides a possibility for the union of the

created with the uncreated.

Zizioulas criticizes that Christology tends to be discussed only in terms of

natures, divine and human. He regards that “Christology is a matter of relationships

97
of persons acting in freedom”.256 Zizioulas criticizes the view that Christ gave up

his divinity in suffering for our sake in terms of the self-emptying (kenosis) in the

incarnation. Zizioulas denies this view because Christ’s divinity has been affirmed

by the relationship with the Father, and this relationship is in no way altered by the

incarnation. The nature of Christ is the same with the Father and this nature exists

without interruption. He can suffer because he took human nature. In Christ nothing

of his divinity receded or was withdrawn in the incarnation. He was completely

human and completely God as the Council of Chalcedon (451) stated that in Christ

we acknowledge complete divinity and complete humanity, nothing missing in

either respect.

For Zizioulas, Christology and Pneumatology belong together and cannot be

separated. The Holy Spirit is the ‘life-giver’.257 Zizioulas has not emphasized alone

the function of Spirit as the drive towards the realization of personal ontology,

because he insists a proper synthesis between Christology and Pneumatology.258

“Pneumatology contributes to Christology this dimension of communion. And it is

because of this function of Pneumatology that it is possible to speak of Christ as

having a ‘body,’ i.e., to speak of ecclesiology, of the Church as the Body of

Christ.”259

3.3 From biological to ecclesial hypostasis

Zizioulas describes the human person in terms of two modes of existence. One

may be called hypostasis of biological existence; the other hypostasis of ecclesial

existence. For Zizioulas, the transformation from biological to ecclesial hypostasis

256
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 109.
257
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 204.
258
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 126-132.
259
Ibid., 131.
98
means the realization of personhood and this realization is salvation: “The eternal

survival of the person as a unique, unrepeatable and free ‘hypostasis,’ as loving and

being loved, constitutes the quintessence of salvation, the bringing of the Gospel to

man.”260 In this section, I will introduce these two modes of existence. Since it is

very different from traditional Western anthropology, it also leads to a different

soteriology. I will analyze it in chapter seven.

3.3.1 The ontology of communion as a standard to distinguish two modes of

existence

In the first part 1.4.2, we have stated that Athanasius develops the idea of

communion which belongs to an ontological category. The ontology of

communion has been formed within the Eucharistic theology developed by Ignatius,

through Irenaeus, up to Athanasius.261 This is an ontological revolution subverting

the ‘being-in-itself’ of Greek substantialist philosophy. Based on the ontology of

communion, Zizioulas concludes: “In summarizing this attempt at a synthesis of

Greek patristic thought concerning truth, we can say that the Greek Fathers’ main

success in this area rests in the identification of truth with communion.”262 When

this point of view has been applied to created existence, Zizioulas describes the

fallen existence as the rupture between being and communion.263 Then salvation

means a recovery of the relation between being and communion. It is very different

from the Western soteriological categories like sin, justification and sanctification.

From the perspective of the relationship between God and man, God created the

world so that it would participate in his own glorious life. The responsibility of man

260
Ibid., 49.
261
Ibid., 83.
262
Ibid., 101.
263
Ibid., 102.
99
is to bring the world into a living relationship or communion with him. He was to be

the mediator between the material world and God, and so he was created at the end

of creation, when everything else was ready for him. God gave man God’s own

freedom and the capacity for self-government. But the freedom of man includes a

possibility for the fall of man. “Man has the freedom which every other created

being in the material world lacks, and he exercises it by accepting or rejecting each

given event or situation.”264 When man decided to exercise his freedom by saying

‘no’ to God and makes himself ‘God’, the fall happens. “Adam succumbed to the

temptation to declare himself ‘God’ and set out to redirect creation from the

uncreated God to his own, created self. In deciding that everything should refer to

him, his fall was also the fall of creation.”265

Zizioulas lists three consequences of the fall or rupture between being and

communion.

The first consequence is idolatry. Zizioulas explains the reason: idolatry is the

elevation of created existence into an ultimate point of reference. Since man

realizes how much weaker he is, he regarded nature as a god, or indeed as many

gods. He began to divinize the forces of nature and then to worship them. It is a

tragedy for mankind to deify creation, for it leads to a dissolution: “When man took

God’s place and turned himself to nature, all creation became victim to man’s

delusion. Man and creation have together become confined to a life determined by

the laws of nature. Though biological life seems to point towards life without limit,

it only takes them in the direction of eventual dissolution.”266

The second consequence is that truth has been linked with the nature or

substance of things. The substance or ousia of things becomes the ultimate content

264
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 98.
265
Ibid., 98.
266
Ibid., 99.
100
of truth. The being of things has been recognized before a relationship, and every

single being acquires an ontological status on its own merit. The world consists of

objects, thus the known and the knower exist as two opposite partners. “Since the

being of things is ultimate and prior to communion, and everything that exists

posits its own being as something ‘given’ to man the world ultimately consists of a

fragmented existence in which beings are particular before they can relate to each

other: you first are and then relate.”267

The third consequence is a ‘dying being’. One biological fact is that death takes

place at the end of life. We will analyze death as an ontological problem which is

connected with individualization in the next section on the biological hypostasis.

Therefore, for Zizioulas, from the perspective of the ontology of communion, the

biological hypostasis as a natural life is determined by the laws of nature which

lacks communion with God. Only the ecclesial hypostasis as new life is in

communion with God. The ecclesial hypostasis does not exclude the existence of

the biological body.

3.3.2 Biological hypostasis

3.3.2.1 The emergence of biological hypostasis

For Zizioulas, biological hypostasis is produced by human biological nature:

“The hypostasis of biological existence is ‘constituted’ by a man’s conception and

birth. Every man who comes into the world bears his ‘hypostasis’, which is not

entirely unrelated to love: he is the product of a communion between two

people.”268 This biological hypostasis can be traced back to two ‘passions’. The

first ‘passion’ is tied to the natural instinct which Zizioulas calls ‘ontological

267
Ibid., 103.
268
Ibid., 50.
101
necessity’. Because the natural instinct or impulse is subject to necessity rather than

freedom, thus the person as a being ‘subsists’ not as freedom but as necessity. The

second ‘passion’ is distinguished by two stages: one is called individualism, the

separation of the hypostases; the other is death. The earlier stage means the

self-affirmation without an ontological relationship with his parents: “The body,

which is born as a biological hypostasis, behaves like the fortress of an ego, like a

new ‘mask’ which hinders the hypostasis from becoming a person, that is, from

affirming itself as love and freedom.”269

3.3.2.2 Death as an ontological problem for biological hypostasis

Death is the final stage of biological hypostasis. Zizioulas distinguishes two

kinds of death. One is in the sense of biology which belongs to the nature of what is

created; the other is the opposite of real life in our fallen existence.270 This kind of

death is the outcome of the fall.

Zizioulas thinks that there is a possible misconception about biological death:

death entered the world as the punishment for disobedience and the fall.271 It means

that an ethical relationship between God and the world determined the death of man.

It seems that God introduced death to creation and imposed it on man. Salvation has

often been set out in moral and judicial terms. For Zizioulas, biological death has

not been caused by man’s act of disobedience. Zizioulas regards that death has

always been the natural condition of created beings, and death is inevitable for

creation.272 Because the world came from nothingness, death is only a return to

nothingness.

269
Ibid., 51.
270
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 264.
271
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 102.
272
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 51; Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 102.
102
 Death is not only a biological phenomenon. For Zizioulas, he also discusses

death as the opposite of the real life and I would call it spiritual death. “Life is

always understood as relationship and as communion.”273 Death means the being is

deprived of the benefit of existing forever; death as the state of corruption,

destruction and perdition must be understood in relation to the definition of life. It is

easy for us to understand those concepts of Zizioulas if we borrow the existentialist

theological term—‘the authentic being of man’. John Macquarrie explains: “The

commandment of the Creator is life. (Romans 7.10) Whereas man in his fallen

existence loses his being and runs into death, when he exists according to the

command and intention of the Creator, he gains his being and attains to life in the

fullest sense.”274

An important significance for anthropology is that Zizioulas traces the life of

spiritual death and the new spiritual life to ‘after the flesh’ or ‘after the Spirit’. It is

different from the judgment based on human nature. Zizioulas’ understanding is

consistent with the New Testament: “So that the just requirement of the law might

be fulfilled in us, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.”

(Romans 8. 4) The existence of the fall or death is an existence ‘after the flesh’.

Man’s authentic existence is ‘after the Spirit’ which expresses a way of man’s being:

man is oriented to God, to the invisible and eternal rather than to the world, i.e., the

visible, the tangible, and the temporal.

Death is an ontological problem for human beings. Zizioulas claims that the

problem cannot be put right simply by our obedience: “Athanasius pointed out that

if the problem could be solved simply by forgiving Adam his sin, God could have

done so. Adam could have repented, and indeed he did weep and regret what he had

273
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 78.
274
John Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology: A comparison of Heidegger and Bultmann
(Harmandsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 129.
103
done. God could have forgiven him, and all would have been well. But Athanasius

shows that the heart of the problem was not obedience or disobedience, because

this was not a moral but an ontological problem.” 275 The ontological problem

determines the significance of death and resurrection of Jesus:

This victory is achieved in the Resurrection, without which there can be no talk of salvation,
because death is the problem of creation. “If Christ has not been raised”, says St Paul, “your
faith is in vain” (I Cor. 15.14). Christ is ‘the Saviour of the world’ not because he sacrificed
himself on the Cross, thereby wiping away the sins of the world, but because “he is risen from
276
the dead having trampled death by death.”

The themes of death and life are the main categories in Zizioulas’ theology. For

Zizioulas, sin is a moral consideration, and death is ontological. However, he did

not discuss the problem of sin. From the above quotation, he also wants to say that

the Cross is not related to the atoning of sins.

3.3.3 The ecclesial hypostasis

The new mode of existence formed in the Church is called ‘the hypostasis of

ecclesial existence’ by Zizioulas. The hypostasis of ecclesial existence is the new

life, an eternal life. The ecclesial existence exists truly in unbroken relationship

with God. The true definition of man is the creature who participates freely in the

life of God—not a creature who lives from some resources of his own.277

3.3.3.1 The emergence of a new particular hypostasis through Baptism

According to Zizioulas, ‘the hypostasis of ecclesial existence’ is produced from

the new birth of man through baptism. Baptism leads to a new mode of existence, to

a regeneration (I Peter 1. 3, 23) and to a new ‘hypostasis’. The realization of the

275
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 102. Zizioulas did not explain the source of
Athanasius’ opinion.
276
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 261.
277
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 115.
104
ecclesial hypostasis is through baptism. According to the hypostatic communion,

Zizioulas defines the essence of baptism: “This adoption of man by God, the

identification of his hypostasis with the hypostasis of the Son of God, is the essence

of baptism.” 278 The new hypostasis of man is realized through the Church.

Therefore, in early patristic literature the image of the Church as mother is often

employed. Through the Church a birth takes place: man is born as ‘hypostasis,’ as

person.

Baptism brings about a transformation of personal identity. This understanding is

based on the personal identity of Jesus. It means an ontological or personal

principle which has been applied from God to man: “As an ecclesial hypostasis man

thus proves that what is valid for God can also be valid for man: the nature does not

determine the person; the person enables the nature to exist; freedom is identified

with the being of man.”279

Firstly, Zizioulas discusses the case of incarnation. What makes Christ a person

is the relationship with the Father through which all his other relationships exist and

by which they are determined. In the incarnation, Christ took on other relationships

such as relationships with his mother, his disciples, and the entire people of Israel.

Zizioulas claims that “all these relationships belong to his personal identity, and

they are all judged by the decisive relationship that Christ has with the Father.”280

It can provide an answer for one question: where does Christ get his consciousness

of himself from? There was a long discussion, chiefly in Roman Catholic

theological circles, of whether Christ had two kinds of consciousness in two natures.

Zizioulas claims that the consciousness to be a self has been produced in a

relationship. According to this logic, Christ has a single self-consciousness. Christ

278
Ibid., 56.
279
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 57.
280
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 112.
105
draws his consciousness of himself from his relationship with the Father and is

determined by this single relationship. Zizioulas claims that only until 20th century

did some philosophers find that self-consciousness is decided by relationship.

“After many centuries, some twentieth-century philosophers have made the

discovery that there is no ‘I’ without a ‘you’.”281 It is important for the practice of

faith. Zizioulas uses iconography as an example: there are different meanings in

Western portraits of Christ and those in Byzantine. In the West, Christ is portrayed

as a baby alone with his mother, the Virgin Mary, which means that the maternal

relationship gives the identity to the baby. But in Byzantine, the painter shows us

that the child is God, and so the baby is not defined by the Virgin but by his

relationship with the Father.282

Secondly, it can be used in the human case. “We are persons because our distinct

identity is given by our various relationships, biological relationships with our

parents, natural relationships with our environment, and a vast complex of other

social and political relationships.”283 We receive our personhood from the whole

vast community. When we accept baptism, it means there is a relationship between

us and God. This relationship will eventually determine all other relationships. That

means that only one relationship is the most important and ultimate for us. This

relationship makes me myself rather than someone else.

Personal identity has some basic characteristics. Zizioulas introduces two of

them: one is that through the Church man transcends exclusivism. According to

Zizioulas, when man loves as a biological hypostasis, he inevitably excludes others:

the family has priority in love over ‘strangers’. But the ecclesial hypostasis

constitutes a transcendence of this exclusiveness. “The ecclesial hypostasis is the

281
Ibid., 113.
282
See John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 112-113.
283
Ibid., 111.
106
capacity of the person to love without exclusiveness, and to do this not out of

conformity with a moral commandment (‘Love thy neighbor,’ etc.) but out of his

‘hypostatic constitution,’ out of the fact that his new birth from the womb of the

Church has made him part of a network of relationships which transcends every

exclusiveness.” 284 Zizioulas expresses this characteristic through the concept of

‘catholicity’. Catholicity permits the person to become a hypostasis without falling

into individuality. In the Church two things are realized simultaneously: the world

is presented to man not as mutually exclusive portions but as a single whole. Man is

called upon to unite every concrete being. At the same time this man expresses and

realizes a catholic presence in the world, a hypostasis which is not an individual but

an authentic person in communion. Zizioulas defines this characteristic on an

ontological level rather than a moral level: Thus the ecclesial hypostasis is not a

moral perfection or an improvement of nature or biological hypostasis, but a new

creation.285

3.3.3.2 Eucharistic hypostasis as a relational expression between biological

and ecclesial hypostasis

Zizioulas begins to discuss the other question related to our existential

experience: “What happens to the biological hypostasis of man when that which I

have called the ecclesial hypostasis is brought into being?” 286 In spite of the

existence of the ecclesial hypostasis, man does not cease at the same time to be born

and to die in accordance with his biological hypostasis. In fact, the encounter

between the ecclesial and the biological hypostases creates a paradoxical

relationship in human existence. In theory, baptism gives man a personal identity

284
Ibid., 58.
285
See John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 58, footnote 53.
286
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 58.
107
determined by his relationship with God. But the ecclesial hypostasis is not entirely

realized in man’s historical existence: “Man appears to exist in his ecclesial identity

not as that which he is but as that which he will be; the ecclesial identity is linked

with eschatology, that is, with the final outcome of his existence.”287 In practice a

question arises: “What kind of experience of authentic personhood is it that the

ecclesial hypostasis offers?”288

Zizioulas uses a new ontological category of sacramental or Eucharistic

hypostasis to express the authentic personhood which is offered historically and

experientially by the holy Eucharist.

Firstly, Zizioulas explains the Eucharist which is different from Eastern

Orthodoxy under the influence of Western scholasticism: “The Eucharist is first of

all an assembly, a community, a network of relations, in which man ‘subsists’ in a

manner different from the biological as a member of a body which transcends every

exclusiveness of a biological or social kind.”289 It means that the Eucharist provides

a locus where man experiences the transcendence of the ontological necessity and

exclusiveness entailed by the biological hypostasis: “The Eucharist is the only

historical context of human existence where the terms ‘father,’ ‘brother,’ etc., lose

their biological exclusiveness, and reveal, as we have seen, relationships of free

and universal love.” 290 The Eucharist is the ecclesial identity in its historical

realization. For in the Eucharist, man becomes an authentic person. “[Eucharist]

has as its object man’s transcendence of his biological hypostasis and his becoming

an authentic person.” 291 The Eucharist means that man ultimately exists only

287
Ibid., 59.
288
Ibid., 59.
289
Ibid., 60.
290
Ibid., 60.
291
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 61. See footnote 61. Zizioulas takes marriage as example:
“it would be a mistake to regard marriage as a simple confirmation and blessing of a biological fact.
Linked with the Eucharist it becomes a reminder that although the newly married couple have been
108
within Christ.292

Secondly, Zizioulas stresses that it is the eschatological character of the

Eucharist that expresses the relationship between the ecclesial and the biological

hypostasis. The ecclesial hypostasis is not simply a historical being but points to an

eschatological being transcending history. “The ecclesial hypostasis reveals man as

a person, which, however, has its roots in the future and is perpetually inspired, or

rather maintained and nourished, by the future. The truth and the ontology of the

person belong to the future, are images of the future.”293 According to the book of

Hebrews, Zizioulas cleverly explains this hypostasis as “the assurance of things

hoped for, the conviction of things not seen” (Hebrews 11:1) in light of the

eschatological character of the Eucharist. Therefore, the eschatological character of

the ecclesial hypostasis contains a kind of dialectic of ‘already but not yet.’ This

dialectic appears in the Eucharist: it provides a perspective to render man as a

person to see that his true home is not in this world, but in the future, “The ecclesial

hypostasis, as a transcendence of the biological, draws its beginning from the being

of God and from that which it will itself be at the end of the age.”294

blessed in order to create their own family, nevertheless the ultimate and essential network of
relationships which constitutes their hypostasis is not the family but the Church as expressed in the
Eucharistic assembly. This eschatological transcendence of the biological hypostasis is also
conveyed by the ‘crowning’ of the bride and groom, but is lost essentially and existentially from the
moment the rite of marriage is separate from the eucharist.”
292
See John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 116.
293
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 62.
294
Ibid.
109
 Chapter Four

Personal otherness and communion

In chapter two, I have already briefly explored the consequence of regarding the

Father as personal cause who generates personal otherness and communion.

Communion and otherness are two aspects of the concept of person. This kind of

understanding of person in communion rejects the paradigm of the introspective,

self-reflective, autonomous and self-sufficient person. This chapter will further

explain the concept of otherness and communion, criticize Emmanuel Levinas’

concept of otherness without communion,295 and discuss the transformation of an

impersonal relation between humans and humans to a personal relation. It means

that the ultimate human-human relationship should not be ‘ethical’ or anything

other than personal or ontological.

4.1 Personal otherness of the being of human person

4.1.1 The basic meaning of Otherness: uniqueness and relationship

For Zizioulas, otherness is primary and constitutive of the very idea of being. It

should be distinguished from an ethical concept: “Respect for otherness is a matter

not of ethics but of ontology: if otherness disappears beings simply cease to be.”296

Firstly, otherness, by definition, implies personal uniqueness. The uniqueness

has been formed in the unique relationship in which a certain other is singled out as

the unique Other. Uniqueness is not understood in terms of nature, but is rooted in

personal existence. Zizioulas analyzes the ground of uniqueness:

All qualities that we normally use in our culture to indicate difference are in fact common to all
three divine Persons; they belong to divine nature (omniscience, holiness, might, goodness,

295
Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995) was a French philosopher of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry who is
known for his work related to Jewish philosophy, existentialism, ethics, and ontology.
296
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 11.
110
 energy, etc.). The only otherness we can speak of in the case of the Trinity is personal otherness.
It is an otherness that involves uniqueness and radical alterity stemming not from natural or
moral qualities, or from a combination of such qualities, but from unique relations.297

Secondly, Otherness as uniqueness is generated in a relationship with the

absolute Other. “Only if the ultimate goal of a particular being is the Other, and

only if this Other is a person that can hypostasize the particular and elevate it to the

status of ontological ultimacy, can this particular being survive as particular, and

not be swallowed up by the general.”298 This means that if the existence of a certain

being has the general as its ultimate goal, it will be destined to be absorbed by the

general. Thus, Zizioulas affirms the crucial question for human beings: “is whether

in all truth the ultimate goal in our existence is—to put it in terms borrowed from

patristic theology— the ‘other’ not as λλο but as λλοζ (otherness of being),

that is, not as nature but as person or hypostasis.”299

The Other must be a person rather than a principle such as morality, a code of

behavior, etc. This point can be used to criticize the tendency to reduce religion into

a kind of ethics. However, it raises some questions: whether the work of the Cross

can be morally described through the absolute priority of the Other, whether

martyrdom and asceticism are part of ethics, and whether we have such an ethic of

otherness. Zizioulas thinks that the application of otherness to morality involves a

logical difficulty, because otherness is generated from unique relations rather than

the self alone or its nature. “The Other can truly exist as Other only if it is ultimately

regarded as person or hypostasis and not as self or nature, it will mean that every

being should be treated as absolutely Other in the above sense.”300 Ethics operates

with general principles which belong to a general category of beings. However, it is

297
Ibid., 70.
298
Ibid., 68.
299
Gregory Naz., Ep. 101. 4 (PG 37, 180A-B); Maximus, Ep. 15 (PG 91, 552B): λλο=otherness of
nature; λλοζ =otherness of person. See Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 68, footnote 157.
300
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 69.
111
difficult to comprehend otherness by a general category of beings like essence or

nature. Therefore, Zizioulas claims that we cannot regard and treat all ‘others’ as

absolutely and truly Other from the perspective of ethics. In other words, we can

only understand others as absolutely and truly others ‘in Christ’ or ontologically.

4.1.2 Otherness as constitutive of human person

For Zizioulas, there is an internal relationship between communion, otherness,

freedom and ‘to be the other’. All communion must make otherness a primary and

constitutive ingredient; it makes the other free, not only having the ‘freedom of

will’, but also having the freedom to be the other: “Otherness is necessary for

freedom to exist: if there is no absolute, ontological otherness between God and the

world, there is no ontological freedom allowing each of these two ‘beings’ to be

themselves and thus to be at all.”301 For Zizioulas, ontological otherness is the

presupposition for the other to be other. The Father as personal cause generates

otherness, namely, God is the source of all otherness. Zizioulas analyzes two facets

of otherness.

(a) The human being is defined through otherness. Human being’s identity

emerges only in relation to other beings: God and the rest of creation. Freedom is

the presupposition: a human being is distinguished from the animals by his or her

freedom. Rational capacity is often regarded as man’s distinctive characteristic but

it needs to be qualified by freedom. Freedom means the drive to ontological

otherness with respect to God, animals and other human beings. At the social level,

classes or qualities of any kind lack ontological otherness. The human being who

has freedom for otherness refuses to be identified as a member of class or group, or

a category of natural or moral qualities.

301
Ibid., 19.
112
(b) The drive of the human being towards otherness is rooted in the divine call to

Adam. The call simultaneously implies three things: relationship, freedom, and

otherness. First, through the call, a relationship has been constituted: Adam as a

human being other than God and the rest of creation in freedom. Through the

relationship, our emphasis on otherness and freedom can be distinguished from

individualism: “The otherness is not the result of self-affirmation; it is an otherness

granted and is not self-existent, but a particularity which is a gift of the Other.”302

Second, the call means that God is the ground for the existence of human. If there is

no God, there is no man, and there is no freedom for the human being to be the

ultimate other: “Freedom without God would lose its ontological character; it

would be reduced to freedom of the will.” 303 Third, Zizioulas introduces

a-symmetry into relationality. Ultimately, only God, not humans, is an initiator or

the subject of the call. His idea can be distinguished from the ontology of

relationship, i.e., the human being does not spring automatically from just any

relationship. Instead, otherness is a unique gift which comes from the Other or God.

Finally, the identity of a human being is constantly formed through the response to

this call of the Other. Because of the human free will, Zizioulas emphasizes that “as

long as there is freedom there is history: the ‘yes’ and ‘no’ to the call, which defines

humanity and makes the human being an historical being…To this call, Adam in his

freedom answered with a ‘no’. It was Christ who fulfilled it, thus revealing and

realizing in himself what it means to be truly human.”304

4.1.3 Otherness beyond the conflict between the particular/person and the

general/nature

302
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 41.
303
Ibid., 42.
304
Ibid., 43.
113
 In the thought of the Greek Fathers, hypostasis or person signifies the particular,

while nature or ousia expresses the common or general. For Zizioulas, the

individual ceases to exist after death, but nature or ousia of human beings does not

disappear. There seems to be a conflict between the particular and the general. Of

course, the conflict mentioned here does not mean a formal logical contradiction,

but a kind of existential tension.

There are two areas in which the ontological level of human existence manifests

itself in a decisive and uncontrollable way: the way a human being is established as

a particular through biological birth, and the way it ceases to be a particular after

death. Both of these facts are ontological and not merely psychological, since they

are constitutive of a particular human being and totally uncontrollable by our minds

or feelings. Both of them involve a conflict between the particular and the general,

the ‘hypostatic’ and the ‘natural’.305

This kind of conflict only exists in the created realm. In the case of the human

being, nature precedes the person, whereas in God the two coincide fully. Human

beings are born as a result of pre-existing natural laws, common to all humans. So

the general being in this case is ontologically prior to the particular. In God the

divine persons exist not as a result of given natural laws. Three persons and one

substance exist simultaneously as one and many. So there cannot be any conflict

between the particular and the general for God.

Zizioulas affirms that the conflict is ontological and not merely psychological.

Everything that exists, whether consciously or unconsciously, undergoes and

suffers this conflict. Zizioulas criticizes that ever since Augustine the Western mind

has tended to treat the conflict between nature and person as a psychological

experience of the self and its consciousness. Zizioulas regards it as an ontological

305
Ibid., 56.
114
matter instead.

Zizioulas emphasizes that the conflict can only be resolved in the body because

the body is ontologically constitutive of the human being and so essential for his

identity and particularity. Because the body is absolutely important for a human

being to be a particular, the resurrection of the body is necessary if the conflict is to

be resolved. According to Zizioulas, from the apologists, above all Irenaeus, to

Methodius of Olympus in the fourth century, Christian anthropology could not

conceive human identity without the body. He affirms the Creeds which include the

most important article of the Resurrection of Christ from the very beginning (1

Corinthians 15). The creeds emphasize the resurrection of the ‘flesh’ or the ‘body’

of Christ, and not simply his ‘death’ for our sin. For the human being, the resolution

of the conflict cannot be found outside the body itself. For example, some people

resort to the immortality of the soul, a kind of escape from the body, but this

amounts to the loss of the human being itself. For Zizioulas, the conflict between

hypostasis and nature can be resolved by “the resurrection both as an historical

event in the person of Christ and as the eschatological destiny for all humanity”.306

4.1.4 Otherness decides the end of ecclesial existence

According to this view of personal otherness, Zizioulas explains the meaning of

the being of the Church: “By being the body of Christ, the Church exists as the

hypostasization of all particular beings in the unique hypostasis of Christ, which

guarantees the ontological truth, the eternal survival…of every being we regard as

unique and indispensable, for he is the only one in whom death, which threatens the

particular with extinction, is overcome.” 307 Since the being of Church is ‘the

306
Ibid., 62.
307
Ibid., 75-76.
115
hypostasization of all particular beings in the unique hypostasis of Christ’, the

Church in every respect serves this purpose. “The Church is the place where God’s

love as the love of a particular and ontologically unique being is freely offered to

his creation in the person of Christ, so that every particular human being may freely

obtain ontological otherness in him. This is the ‘essence’ of the Church—everything

else is meant to be the means for its realization.”308

Ziziouals describes the Church fundamentally as Eucharistic way of being. It is

in the Eucharist that the love of God is offered to humanity as the unique hypostasis

in which all human beings can freely obtain otherness and uniqueness. The two

most important sacraments are connected in their ontological significance: “The

only way for a particular being ontologically to be truly Other is to be born again,

this time not from nature but from the Spirit…What Baptism initiates, therefore, the

Eucharist fulfils. Otherness as the emergence of a new particular being through

Baptism is granted eternal being through communion in the Eucharist.”309 At the

same time, there is an ontological relationship between the Church and the world

when Zizioulas understands of the Church through the Euchrist. He argues this

issue in his book The Eucharistic Communion and the World.310 He develops a

cosmic dimension of the Eucharist and the Church. Therefore, Zizioulas’

ecclesiology is related to ecology as well. The ontological foundation of these

issues is the ontology of personhood. Given space limitations, this article can’t fully

explore ecclesiology.

Because Zizioulas regards that Pneumatology contributes to Christology the

dimension of communion, and therefore, Christology cannot be separated from

308
Ibid., 79.
309
Ibid., 80.
310
John Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World, ed. Luke Ben Tallon (London: T & T
Clark, 2011).
116
Pneumatology, 311 Zizioulas affirms Spirit as the force of hypostasization. “The

Spirit offers the particularizing force which guarantees that hypostasization in

Christ will not end up in an absorption of the many into the one, in the loss of

otherness.”312

4.2 Personal communion in otherness

As we have described, for Zizioulas, Church is the place, as a Eucharistic way of

being, where human beings can obtain otherness in communion. Communion is

explained by Zizioulas by the liturgical or sacramental approach, especially the

Eucharistic approach.313 Communion is an ontological category: “The ontology of

communion [is] formed within the current of eucharistic theology that connected

Ignatius, through Irenaeus, up to Athanasius.”314 Communion is an event: “True

knowledge is not a knowledge of the essence or the nature of things, but of how they

are connected within the communion-event.”315 Communion and otherness are not

only limited to ecclesial or sacramental manifestations. Zizioulas writes: “On the

contrary, communion and otherness are supposed to permeate and pervade our

lives in their entirety. They are to become an attitude, an ethos, rather than an ethic

and a set of principles.”316 Zizioulas applies the ascetic life, say, of the desert

Fathers as a concrete example to explain the co-inherence of communion and

otherness.

The desert Fathers provide an ontological ground for our attitude to the Other.

They insist that the Other should be kept free from moral judgment and

categorization: “The Other is not identifiable ontologically in moral terms, for he or

311
Ibid., 131.
312
Ibid., 76.
313
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 101.
314
Ibid., 83.
315
Ibid., 106.
316
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 81.
117
she would cease to be truly Other if placed in class or category applicable to more

than one entity. By being a person, the Other is by definition unique and therefore

unclassifiable. Only in this way can one remain truly and absolutely, that is,

ontologically, Other.” 317 Zizioulas emphasizes that this kind of attitude of the

ascetic Fathers is not concerned with the inner psychological experience of the

individual. Its ground is relational and ontological: “one is truly oneself in so far as

one is hypostasized in the Other while emptying oneself so that the Other may be

hypostasized in oneself. This hypostasization constitutes the essence of communion:

‘it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me.’”318 (Galatians 2.20) For the

sake of others, they condemn themselves:

‘The beginning of salvation for everyone is to condemn himself’, is the very foundation of
asceticism for the desert Fathers, such as Anthony, Arsenius, Ammoes, Poimen, Theophilus,
John Colovos, etc. The death of self is the condition for salvation. This condemnation of the
Self is tied up with one’s positive attitude to the Other, with the liberation of the Other from his
or her evil qualities. Therefore, the Other has priority over the self, he must not be judged; he
319
must be stripped of his moral qualities; he must be simply himself and loved for who he is.

This ‘condemnation of the Self’ is the foundation for a positive attitude to the

Other. However, how can desert Fathers deal with evil, which apparently exists in

other people? In this situation, evil is not ignored or overlooked, but is passed from

the Other to the Self. Zizioulas writes: “The stories of such empathy with the

Other’s sin which are retained in the lives of the desert Fathers are indeed striking

and moving. One of the brothers does penance for the other’s sins, as if he had

committed them himself…The personal cost in such cases is very high but it is paid

gladly in a Christ-like manner.”320 So we need to carry the Other’s burden or sin.

Moreover, Zizioulas confirms the righteousness of ascetic life by discussing an

317
Ibid., 82.
318
Ibid., 85.
319
Ibid., 82-83.
320
Ibid., 82, see footnote 183.
118
issue: Does the ascetic ethos violate truth, when it transfers the evil of the other to

one’s innocent self? Zizioulas gives a twofold answer to this question. First, the

theological justification is Christological: Christ became a curse for us (Galatians

3.13), so that we could become the righteousness of God (II Corinthians 5.21). For

the desert Fathers, the ground of their activity is the Christology of kenosis:

“Behind the ethos of self-condemnation for the sake of the Other lies the

Christology of kenosis.”321 They develop the theology of ascetic kenosis: the entire

giving over of the I to the other and receiving of the other in his or her fullness.

Therefore, self-condemnation should be understood under a principle: the Other

having primacy over the Self.322 Their purpose is not to develop their subjectivity

but the giving up of the Self to the Other, an expression of kenosis.

Second, it involves an ethical question. Ethics operates with a classification of

human beings as either good or evil; the ascetic ethos presented above proceeds

with the assumption that all human beings participate in the fall and are sinful. For

example, Jesus declared the accusers of the adulterous woman incompetent to pass

judgment on her: ‘let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone

at her’ (John 8.7). According to the ethical principles, the Other is so identified with

his or her qualities that he or she appears to be affected ontologically by these

qualities. When someone commits adultery or murder, we tend to say that he or she

is an adulterer or a murderer. But God in Christ forgives our sin by removing them

(Acts 3. 19; Romans 4. 7-8, 11, 27; etc.). Christ can remove our sin by bearing our

sins in his body on the tree, i.e., he dies and rises for us. This means that evil cannot

be identified with the evil-doer. Ascetic life which bears the evil of the other

testifies to this truth, which is affirmed by the sacrificial love of Christ.

321
Ibid., 83.
322
Ibid., 84.
119
 Furthermore, this does not mean forgiveness is a merely psychological matter—a

sheer forgetting, not a removing of sin—which is not what Christian forgiveness

means. 323 Even when it is said that God no longer ‘remembers’ our sins, the

meaning is not psychological but ontological, since whatever God does not

‘remember’ ceases to exist (Hebrews 10.4). Thus, the Christian ethos of otherness

does not allow for the acceptance or the rejection of the Other on the basis of his or

her qualities, natural or moral, but on the simple basis of each person’s ontological

particularity and integrity. Therefore, transferring evil from the Other to an

innocent self is not violating truth.

This model of communion is undergirded by a metaphysical principle: the

priority of the Other over the Self. Zizioulas’ understanding of communion is

grounded in Maximus’ thought: “All this is grounded by Maximus in the

Incarnation, which for him is the mystery of love. Both the negative aspect of

ascetic life, that is the uprooting of self-love, and its positive goal, which consists in

the attainment of virtues and theosis, involve the priority of the Other over the

Self.” 324 This kind of view of communion suggests that otherness implies

demoralization or a-moralization of human life.325 This, of course, does not mean

the encouragement of immoralities, but means that the worth of human life cannot

be assessed only from the moral perspective. In this way, it preserves one’s personal

uniqueness and dignity, regardless of one’s moral achievements.

While I think the metaphysical principle concerning the priority of the Other over

the Self is insightful, it may not be sufficient for a full understanding of the concept

of communion with others. I will discuss this issue in chapter seven.

323
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 86.
324
Ibid., 84.
325
Ibid., 82.
120
4.3 Transformation of the relationship with the Other
As I discuss above, Zizioulas’ understanding of communion with the Other is

operated under a metaphysical principle of the Other as having primacy over the

Self. The Other may be hypostasized in oneself and hypostasization constitutes the

essence of communion. It means that the purpose of this kind of communion is to

let the Other be the Other. Therefore, a communion in otherness provides a

possibility for us to build up personal relations in a community.

4.3.1 Negligence of the Other

In the last chapter, I criticize the individualist concept of person in the Western

tradition. The theological and philosophical anthropology has characteristically

been framed as the question of the self rather than the question of the other. The

other has been ignored. From a perspective of epistemology, the Other has to be

reduced to something for the self to recognize. Since Descartes discovers the cogito,

the external world and other people have always been a source of philosophical

difficulty. It is because the philosophers find that it is not easy to explain how I can

really be certain of the existence of the external world and other minds. The Other

has been brought under the domination and subjugation of the I.326

The ignoring of the Other is also affected by the moralizing of philosophy, which

is heavily criticized by Nietzsche. He blames that since Plato, philosophy has been

dominated by morality. Even in Plato’s predecessors, moral interpretations play a

decisive role.327 The moral ‘good’ is the highest idea which is also a metaphysical

category:
This means that moral judgments are torn from their conditionality, in which they have grown

326
Bo-Myung Seo, A Critique of Western Theological Anthropology: Understanding Human Beings
in a Third World Context (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), 88.
327
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Random House,
1968), 222.
121
 and alone possess any meaning, from their Greek and Greek-political ground and soil, to be
denaturalized under the pretense of sublimation. The great concepts “good” and “just” are
severed from the presuppositions to which they belong and, as liberated “ideas,” become
objects of dialectic. One looks for truth in them, on takes them for entities or signs of entities:
one invents a world where they are at home, where they originate—In summa: the mischief has
already reached its climax in Plato—And then one had need to invent the abstractly perfect
man as well: good, just, wise, a dialectician.328

Since morality (or the social instinct mentioned by Nietzsche below) is largely a

social thing, this leads to a serious consequence: the individual existence has been

overlooked. Friedrich Nietzsche condemns that every individual was sacrificed and

served as a tool: “As the social instinct resting on the valuation that the single

individual is of little account, but all individuals together are of very great account

provided they constitute a community with a common feeling and a common

conscience…My idea: goals are lacking and these must be individuals’! We observe

how things are everywhere…Go into the street and you encounter lots of ‘slaves’.”
329

4.3.2 The self prior to the Other

To use Levinas’ words, it is to reduce the Other into something of the Same:

“Western philosophy has most often been an ontology: a reduction of the other to

the same by interposition of a middle and neutral term that ensures the

comprehension of being.” 330 Zizioulas believes that in Western philosophical

history, the priority of the self over the other is the dominant belief. “When

Parmenides declared ‘being’ to be identical with ‘knowing’, ontology and

epistemology became dependent on each other. This led ancient Greek philosophy

to what Levinas called the idea of ‘sameness’, which he described as totalitarian

328
Ibid., 234-235.
329
Ibid., 154.
330
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis
(London: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1979), 43.
122
ontology.”331

Rosenzweig reflects on the problem of German Idealism, and he claims that the

emphasis on essence can be traced from the philosophy of Thales to Hegel: they try

to find the essence of the world by reducing everything to thought.332 It influences

the relationship between men directly. As said by Levinas: “If it claims to integrate

myself and the other within an impersonal spirit this alleged integration is cruelty

and injustice, that is, ignores the other. History as a relationship between men

ignores a position of the I before the other in which the other remains transcendent

with respect to me.”333 This amounts to stripping the Other of his or her otherness or

humanity. Professor Seo points out: “The idea that to be human is to be a subject is

distinctively a modern achievement, and as such it is largely responsible for making

modern Western thought as a whole a history of thinking about the I.”334 While I do

not entirely deny the significance of this “modern achievement,” I also need to

point out that the consequence of this “achievement” is often the impersonal

treatment of others, which is indeed prevalent in “modern” society.

4.3.3 An impersonal relationship

The human being as biological hypostasis is limited by biological nature. He is

often afraid of the others and continuously defends himself against the

encroachment of his subjectivity by the others. The relations of the members of

society are largely functional. Every person is basically identified with his function

in the society, e.g., being a doctor, a teacher, etc. Such relations are not relations of

persons as persons, but only as workers. They are relations of the functions which
331
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 43.
332
Franz Rosenzweg, His Life and Thought, ed. Nahum Glatzer (New York: Schocken Books, 1961),
179-231.
333
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, 52.
334
Bo-Myung Seo, A Critique of Western Theological Anthropology: Understanding Human Beings
in a Third World Context (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), 82.
123
different persons perform in the cooperative association. The bonds of relation

between individuals which constitute them are impersonal. Each isolated individual

uses all his capacity to secure his own satisfaction and to preserve his own life.

However, these egocentric individuals are still rational beings in terms of the

instrumental reason.

A society which is constituted by isolated individuals can only be held together

by a common purpose, such as economic prosperity of the society. Moreover, the

social order is mainly maintained by a common obedience to law. As said by John

Macmurray: “This yields a mechanical concept of society. Its components are

atomic units, inherently isolated or unrelated, and ideally equal. The units are

dynamic; they are units of energy. There is nothing in them to hold them together.

They are united in a whole by an external force which counteracts the tendency of

their individual energies to repel one another.”335

4.3.4 The necessity of renewing understanding of personhood in theology

Professor Seo thinks that the notions of subjectivity have been bound up not only

with the way of thinking about the subject but also with the global project of

subjection such as the West’s project of colonial expansion and domination in the

modern period. This kind of project has been heavily criticized by liberation

theology, which thinks that we need to listen to the voices of the poor and the

oppressed who witness the contradictions of contemporary civilization. One major

reflection in theologies of liberation concerns theological anthropology: they wish

to redefine the concept of human person to overcome the problems of oppression

and systemic poverty. This means that the understanding of human being conceived

as self and subjectivity should be changed. Min agrees with Gutierrez’s search for

335
John Macmurray, Person in Relation, 137.
124
the ‘creation of a new man’ and says that the self is “not the isolated and

individualistic self, but the self conscious of itself as a member of an interdependent

humanity and therefore in solidarity with others.”336

There are criteria for judging a theological anthropology: whether its

understanding of the human person is adequate to “the normative tradition of

Christian faith and the task of theology to interpret that tradition in view of the

central crisis of the time.”337 According to these criteria, many modern theological

anthropologies are inadequate because they tend to be asocial and ahistorical and

refer exclusively or mainly to individual inwardness and individual

transcendence.338

In the Augustinian tradition, personhood has been understood in terms of

consciousness and its internal distinctions. Thus, it does not essentially involve an

ontological relationship with others: “The journey of the soul toward God is a

journey inward. The process by which the soul comes to the deepest knowledge of

itself and of its God is introspection and self-reflection. This makes the social,

communal, toward-another character of personhood rather difficult to see.” 339

Because nature is the principle of personhood, Western theology did not develop an

anthropology which teaches Christians to respect and cherish otherness. The

relationship with others is also subsumed under general truths. Yannaras criticizes

clearly: “If we relate the image of God to nature and not to the personal

distinctiveness of man, then morality, truth and authenticity of existence, is

something predetermined by nature and essential necessity for man.”340 This is

336
Anselm Min, Dialectic of Salvation: Issues in Theology of Liberation (Albany: SUNY Press,
1989), 93.
337
Ibid., 165.
338
See Bo-Myung Seo, A Critique of Western Theological Anthropology: Understanding Human
Beings in a Third World Context (Lewiston: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2005), 51.
339
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 247.
340
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, 26.
125
exacerbated by our tendency to regard truth as objective propositions, something

impersonal.

It can be traced back to Plato’s axiological idealism which identifies being with

the ‘idea of the Good.’341 According to Yannaras, the approaches and systematic

theories which provide the framework of an axiological ontology and ethics

influence the rationalistic synthesis of Roman Catholic scholasticism and the whole

of Western thought. The standard of good or virtue is based on the rules of logic or

reason. The consequence is that human individuality is subordinated to the

authority of an impersonal absolute reason. Because of the identification of

morality with being or ontology, the idea of morality is also absolutized

intellectually as the idea of an ‘absolute good’. In this manner Roman Catholicism

has laid the foundation for the rationalism and subjectivist ethics of modern

European culture. But it lacks the truth of the personhood and leads to some misery:
When the truth of the person is undervalued or ignored in the realm of theology, this inevitably
results in the creation of a legalistic, external system of ethics…When intellectual and
conventional categories replace ontological truth and revelation in Christian theology, then in
the historical life of the Church, too, the problem of salvation is obscured by a shadow that
torments mankind, that of a ‘law’ which leads to nowhere.342

Under such legalistic systems, it is difficult for Christians to build up a spiritual

relationship with others. Moreover, both Catholic and Protestant churches claim

that they have the ‘right to evangelize’. Sometimes evangelism degenerates into the

‘war for souls,’ both in a metaphorical sense and a literal sense. As a result,

proselytism becomes a terrible caricature of evangelism. 343 When legalistic

standards become extreme or absolutized, it may even lead to cruel actions in the

341
See, for example, Plato, Republic 7:517 bc.
342
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, 26-27.
343
Elizabeth H. Prodromou, “International Religious Freedom and the Challenge of Proselytism”, in
Aristotle Papanikolaou and Elizabeth H. Prodromou eds., Thinking through Faith: New Perspective
from Orthodox Christian Scholars (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 271-272.
126
name of the “Good,” such as the famous Donatists, 344 the Crusades, 345 the

persecution of the Anabaptists,346 or even the United States’ attacking Iraq (even if

the purpose is alleged to be justice). 347 All of these unfortunate developments

resulted in negative effects for the image and reputation of the Church, which is

now not infrequently regarded as the enemy of human rights and the pluralistic

society. These events also sow seeds of hostility between different religions and

cultures which cannot be reconciled for many generations. As Elizabeth Prodromou

points out: “Christianity faces a direct challenge in its contribution toward new

ways of interpreting human right”348 in modern religiously pluralistic world. It

seems that we also need to renew our understanding of human personhood.

4.3.5 A personal relationship

According to Zizioulas, the authentic person or hypostasis is the ecclesial

existence. As I have described in chapter three (section 3.3.3.), the Eucharist means

a relationship between us and God. This relationship determines our relationship

with all human persons and other creatures. It transcends the ontological necessity

or biological limitation and treats the other as authentic person and lets the other

free.

Generally speaking, in Western theology, the purpose of salvation is for our

344
In 3th century, the Donatists were rigorists, holding that the church must be a church of ‘saints’,
not ‘sinners’, and that sacraments, such as baptism, administered by traditores were invalid. See
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donatism
345
In 1096-1291, the Crusades were a series of religious expeditionary wars blessed by the Pope and
the Catholic Church, with the stated goal of restoring Christian access to the holy places in and near
Jerusalem. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades
346
In the 1520’s and 1530’s the Anabaptists were radical, violent revolutionaries in the name of love,
equality and spirituality; and the Reformers persecuted the Anabaptists. See
http://www.frontline.org.za/articles/were_anabaptists_persecuted_for%20_faith.htm
347
On 20 Mar 2003, The United States launched a thundering bomb and missile attack on Baghdad.
This started an all-out war to drive Saddam Hussein from power and disarm Iraq.
348
Elizabeth H. Prodromou, “International Religious Freedom and the Challenge of Proselytism”, in
Aristotle Papanikolaou and Elizabeth H. Prodromou eds., Thinking through Faith: New Perspective
from Orthodox Christian Scholars (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 269.
127
sanctification: “God’s purpose in doing everything that He did in the Old Testament

is ultimately our sanctification. His purpose when He ‘sent forth his Son, made of a

woman, made under the law’ (Galatians 4:4) was still our sanctification. When

Christ went to the death of the cross, the object was our perfection, as it was in the

giving of the Holy Spirit. Indeed, everything God has done about us and our

salvation has as its end and object our sanctification.”349 In contrast with the West,

Christos Yannaras explains the emphasis in Orthodox tradition: “Man was created

to become a partaker in the personal mode of existence which is the life of God—to

become a partaker in the freedom of love which is true life.” 350

When we insist that the purpose of humans is sanctification, we often understand

the concept of sanctification in the sense of ethics. As Charles Hodge says: “All men

instinctively judge a man for what he is. If he is good they so regard him. If he is bad,

they pronounce him to be bad. This judgment is just as inevitable or necessary as

that he is tall or short, learned or unlearned…This is the principle on which we

judge ourselves, and on which men universally judge each other.”351 A relationship

with the living God is often ignored. A personal relationship with other persons

may be lacking too. Christos Yannaras claims: “When the truth of the person is

underrated or ignored in the realm of theology, this inevitably leads to the creation

of a legal, external ethic. Man’s ethos or morality ceases to relate to the truth of the

person, to the dynamic event of true life and its existential realization.”352 Ethics

alone cannot manifest a relationship with the living God. Only by moving away

from legalistic norms can we encounter the living God. As Grec Ogden writes:

“Starved for an internal reality, the Christian life moved away from being defined in

349
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God the Holy Spirit (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 200.
350
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality (New York, St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984),
19.
351
Charles Hodge, Systemtic Theology, Vol. III, 190.
352
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, 153.
128
terms of the ethical norms that the institutional church represented and toward an

encounter with the living Christ.”353 The Bible teaches us to live according to the

Holy Spirit, (Romans 8. 4) The Spirit reveals the Lordship of Christ to Christians.

“For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the

dead and the living.” (Romans 14. 9)

When we are not satisfied with the other’s differences, we can have two kinds of

attitude. First, we should receive a sinner in Christ and pray for him or her, and give

a chance for him or her to repent. Second, we will not forgive until the sinner

repents according to our standard of sanctification. There is a very real possibility

for the second attitude, in light of a standard of Westminster Confession of Faith

with Scripture Proofs:

It is the duty of each one to make private confession of his sins to God, praying for pardon (and
whoever confesses his sins, prays for forgiveness, and forsakes those sins shall find mercy).
Similarly, anyone who has scandalized a brother, or the church of Christ, ought to be willing by
private or public confession, and sorrow for his sin, to declare his repentance to those that are
offended, who are then to be reconciled to him and receive him in love.354

This emphasis on universal moral principles manifests the tendencies towards

intellectualism and moralism.355 However, if we wish to build up an ontological or

personal relationship with others, we need to separate the action of sin from the

sinner. The distinction is clear in the Bible: “Let love be genuine; hate what is evil,

hold fast to what is good…bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse

them.” (Romans 12. 9; 14) If someone does not separate the love for sinner and the

hatred of sin, it is impossible to speak of seeing the sinner from the perspective of

God, and to promote a relationship of love through the work of the Holy Spirit.

353
Greg Ogden, The New Reformation: Returning the Ministry to the People of God (Michigan:
Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 18.
354
See Westminster Confession of Faith with Scripture Proofs 15:6. It is a Reformed confession of
faith, in the Calvinist theological tradition.
355
See Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West, 208-209 and passim.
129
 The classical example in the Bible is “a sinful woman forgiven” in the Gospel of

Luke. When the sinful woman weeps, and anoints Jesus with the ointment, the

Pharisee who had invited Jesus judges the woman in his heart: “If this man were a

prophet, he would have known who and what kind of woman this is who is touching

him—that she is a sinner.”(Luke 7. 39) Jesus says to him: “Therefore, I tell you, her

sins, which were many, have been forgiven; hence she has shown great love. But

the one to whom little is forgiven, loves little.” (Luke 7. 47) In this scene, we can

see two kinds of attitude to the woman. For the Pharisee, his standard of the moral

law hinders him from seeing the woman from the perspective of God. He cannot

transcend the limitation of his experiences. So he cannot understand the action of

the sinful woman, and treat the sinner from the sight of Jesus.

Based on the ontology of personhood, person is defined by otherness in

relationship. It will change the mode of existence of the isolated individual when

we are considering and experiencing persons in relation. The Trinitarian mode of

existence is a mode of personal experience. “We are in right relationship to

ourselves when we accept that our origin, existence and destiny belong not to

ourselves but to God… We were created for the purpose of glorifying God by means

of the whole network of our relationships.”356 Therefore, Trinity is symbolic of

community. Society originates from the family. The family is a basic community in

which the habit of cooperation is learned. The personal life in the family will

transcend self-interest. The habit of cooperation in society which is the family

beyond its boundaries will change the relationship of the isolated individuals: from

a moral or legal relationship to an ontological relationship. The ultimate source

which maintains the society is the personal life rather than the morals or law.

356
John Macmurray, Person in Relation, 347.
130
 It does not mean that we need to abolish law or morality. What is required is a

transformed understanding of morality. Yannaras writes: “Morality is not an

anhypostatic concept but a personal predicate. It is the measure of reference to a

mode of existence ‘according to truth,’ this is to say, to a personal mode of

existence.”357 Its implication is that personal life is our ultimate purpose, and our

understanding of morality needs to be related to this ultimate purpose. The

salvation of God is to restore our communion with God and other people. We live in

a community and we are members of the community. We have an ontological

relationship with others. LaCugna understands the arche of God as personal life.

She articulates precisely the relationship between ontology and ethics: “From the

perspective of a revitalized Trinitarian theology of God, the idea of the arche of

God is not the enemy of mutuality, equality, and a nonhierarchical social order, but

its only sure foundation!”358 In other words, a personal life, properly understood,

far from being the enemy of morality, can in fact provide the foundation for

morality.

4.4 Critique of Levinas’ concept of otherness without communion

When the ‘Other’ is brought to the centre of philosophy as a primary concept, it

means a departure from the consciousness-centred philosophy of Western thought.

Zizioulas takes Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas as examples of this departure

and relates their thought to the patristic understanding of otherness.

For Buber, the other and I have equal primordiality: “The I exists only through

the relationship with the Thou.”359 The dialogical situation “is not to be grasped on

357
Christos Yannaras, Persons and Eros, trans. Norman Russell (Massachusetts: Holy Cross
Orthodox Press, 2007), 285.
358
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 399.
359
See M. Buber, ‘What is Man?’ in Between Man and Man, trans. R.G. Smith (London: Collins,
1954), 205.
131
the basis of the ontic of personal existence, or of that of two personal existences, but

of that which has its being between them and transcends both.”360 Buber claims that

“‘Between’ is not an auxiliary construction, but the real place and bearer of what

happens between men.”361 Zizioulas regards Buber’s concept of ‘Between’ as the

ultimate ontological category.362 Furthermore, the I-Thou and I-It relationship have

been decided by an attitude either of the I-Thou or of the I-It kind.363 This implicitly

makes the Other depend on the intention of the I, who can turn it either into an

I-Thou or into an I-It relationship. Zizioulas believes that I does not exist because of

‘the relationship with the Thou’, but because of the ‘Thou’. Therefore, Zizioulas

queries Buber: “in the final analysis, does this not imply recognition of the primacy

of the I over the Other?” 364 It means that for Zizioulas, Buber’s notion of

personhood still cannot provide an ontological ground for otherness in contrast with

Zizioulas’ concept of personhood.

Zizioulas thinks that Levinas is closer to the patristic understanding of otherness

than any other philosophers: “For Levinas, the Other is not constituted by the Self

(Husserl, etc.), nor by relationality as such (Buber), but rather is absolute alterity,

which cannot be derived, engendered or constituted on the basis of anything other

than itself.” 365 It affirms the constitutive character of the Other in ontology.366

Zizioulas assigns a high value to Levinas’ concept of otherness:

Levinas’ attempt to liberate western philosophy from the primacy of consciousness, from the
reduction of the particular to the general, from grasping, comprehending, controlling and using
being by the human mind is most remarkable indeed. It brings us closer than any other
philosophy to the Greek patristic view of otherness as irreducible to the universal, and of
consciousness as belonging to the universal rather than to the particular, at least with regard to

360
Ibid., 204.
361
Ibid., 203.
362
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 47.
363
M. Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1970), 53-54.
364
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 47.
365
Ibid., 48.
366
Ibid., 48.
132
 367
the Holy Trinity.

At the same time, Zizioulas criticizes Levinas’ concept of otherness without

communion. But he does not give a more detailed analysis. I will try to integrate

Levinas’ concept of otherness with the notion of communion from Zizioulas’

perspective of ontology of personhood.

4.4.1 The ‘otherness’ as metaphysical desire in the thought of Levinas

Levinas criticizes the ‘I’ prior to the other in Western traditional philosophy. He

builds his philosophy on the starting point of the other: “Since the Other looks at me,

I am responsible for him, without even having taken on responsibility in his regard;

his responsibility is incumbent on me…responsibility is initially a for the Other.”368

Rather unlike the common ethics in traditional Western philosophy, Levinas’s

ethical priority is affirmed without recourse to moral principles. It asserts the

priority of the other person over being, or essence. The other constitutes a

dimension of transcendence: “To my mind the Infinite comes in the signifyingness of

the face. The face signifies the Infinite.”369 The desire for the invisible is called the

metaphysical desire. For Levinas, the metaphysical desire tends toward the

absolutely other. The absolutely other “is understood as the alterity of the Other

and of the Most-High. The very dimension of height is opened up by metaphysical

Desire.”370

Not only desire for the alterity or otherness of the Other is emphasized, but also

the otherness of ‘I’. For Levinas, the character of ‘I’ as self-consciousness or

subjectivity amounts to sameness. When I meet the face of the other in the Infinite,

367
Ibid., 49.
368
Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh: Duquesne
University Press, 1982), 96.
369
Ibid., 105.
370
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority (London: Martinus Nijhoff
Publishers, 1979), 35.
133
a being for myself has been suspended. This means that the Other is prior to me or

the Other has priority over my consciousness. As Pierre Hayat puts in his preface to

Alterity and Transcendence: “The face of the other is the locus of transcendence in

that it calls into question the ‘I’ in its existence as a being for itself.”371 Therefore,

the identity of I has been reformed when I meet others: “The I is not a being that

always remains the same, but is the being whose existing consists in identifying

itself, in recovering its identity throughout all that happens to it. It is the primal

identity, the primordial work of identification.”372 It means that the subjectivity of I

has been terminated through the idea of the Infinite and otherness, because the

metaphysical desire for the Infinite or the other is beyond the capacity of the ‘I’ as

self-consciousness.373 “The analysis of the idea of Infinity, to which we gain access

only starting from an I, will be terminated with the surpassing of the subjective.”374

4.4.2 A relationship between I and the Other without communion

Levinas calls the relation with the Infinite metaphysical. He thinks it is prior to

theology and ontology:375 “It would be false to qualify it as theological. It is prior to

the negative or affirmative proposition; it first institutes language, where neither

the no nor the yes is the first word. The description of this relation is the central

issue of the present research.”376 This kind of relation is not the relation which is

formed through the idea of sameness. Levinas regards the relation with the Infinite

as ‘a relation without relation’: “For the relation between the being here below and

the transcendent being that results in no community of concept or totality—a

371
Emmanuel Levinas, Alterity and Transcendence, trans. Michael B. Smith (London: the Athlone
press, 1999), Xiv.
372
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, 36.
373
Ibid., 51.
374
Ibid., 51.
375
Ibid., 42.
376
Ibid., 42.
134
relation without relation—we reserve the term religion.”377

The relationship between the Other and ‘I’ cannot be resolved into a higher unity.

The presupposition of the constitution of the Other is separation or distance. “The

alterity, the radical heterogeneity of the other, is possible, only if the Other is other

with respect to a term whose essence is to remain at the point of departure…A term

can remain absolutely at the point of departure of relationship only as I”.378 The

purpose of separation is the breach of totality: “Thus the metaphysician and the

other can not be totalized. The metaphysician is absolutely separated.”379

Firstly, the being of the Other is not constituted by relation: “It is necessary that a

being, though it is a part of a whole, derive its being from itself and not from its

frontiers (not from its definition), exist independently, depend neither on relations

that designate its place within Being nor on the recognition that the Other would

bring it.”380

Secondly, Levinas regards the happiness in life as the enjoyment of solitude.

Again the concern is the breach of the totality: “The breach of the totality that is

accomplished by the enjoyment of solitude-or the solitude of enjoyment—is

radical.”381
Life is love of life, a relation with contents that are not my being but more dear than my being:
thinking, eating, sleeping, reading, working, warming oneself in the sun. Distinct from my
substance but constituting it, these contents make up the worth of my life…The reality of life is
already on the level of happiness, and in this sense beyond ontology…happiness is
accomplishment.382

Levinas criticizes both Western philosophy and religion: “Religion subtends this

formal totality.”383 In Levinas’ metaphysical dimension, or in a final and absolute

377
Ibid., 80.
378
Ibid., 36.
379
Ibid., 35.
380
Ibid., 61.
381
Ibid., 119.
382
Ibid., 112-113.
383
Ibid., 81.
135
vision, metaphysics precedes ontology.384 Therefore, for Levinas, the metaphysical

or personal relation cannot be found in theology, because theology amounts to some

propositions. For Levinas, ontology reduces the other to sameness.385 It means that

Levinas understands ontology in the sense of substance. The separation and

transcendence are the themes of his book Totality and Infinity. Only separation

guarantees the being of the Other.

Zizioulas criticizes Levinas’ concept of otherness without communion: “Levinas

rejects the idea of communion, because he finds in it a threat to otherness by the

same and the general, a subjection of otherness to unity…Levinas himself insists

on separation and distance as alternative ideas to that of relationship.” 386 The

reason seems to be that Levinas wants to reject the kind of communion which

contributes to some form of totalizing reduction bordering on violence. So in fact it

is not necessary for Levinas’ theory to oppose Zizioulas’ notion of communion.

However, Zizioulas does not clearly distinguish two kinds of communion when he

criticizes Levinas. I will analyze a theological concept of communion which can

integrate the idea of otherness in Levinas’ theory.

4.4.3 A kind of communion not threatening otherness

Levinas rejects the idea of communion, because he is afraid of a threat to

otherness by the same and the general, and a subjection of otherness to unity. But

not all communions will threaten otherness. We can distinguish two kinds of

communion and two kinds of eros in order to reconstruct the concept of otherness in

communion. “Eros is a movement, an ekstasis, from one being to another.”387 This

384
Ibid., 43.
385
Ibid., 42.
386
Ibid., 48.
387
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 70.
136
can be found in nature itself, as the ancient Greeks and modern romanticism have

described. It is an ekstasis of the self and an expression and fulfillment of nature’s

inherent energies. This kind of eros does not stem from the Other and is not

ultimately destined to the Other. However, there is another kind of eros. Zizioulas

writes: “For eros to be a true expression of otherness in a personal sense, it must be

not simply ecstatic but also and above all hypostatic: it must be caused by the free

movement of a particular being and have as its ultimate destination another

particular being.”388

Zizioulas contrasts these two kinds of eros in Platonism and in the patristic

understanding. In the case of eros as presented by Plato, the other is not a

constitutive ontological factor, because love is attracted irresistibly by the good and

the beautiful which are ideas. Thus the concrete particular is used as a means to an

end, and finally sacrificed for the sake of the idea. This means that though the erotic

movement appears to be related to one particular being, this being is not unique in

an absolute sense. In contrast, eros, described by St Maximus as a movement of

ekstasis, is constantly intensified and does not stop until the loving one “has

become entire in the whole of the beloved one and is embraced by the whole,

willingly accepting in freedom the saving circumscription”.389 Zizioulas thinks that

eros is described here as a free movement from a free being to another free being.

Communion is its final destination. In this ultimate state of eros as ‘embrace’ or

‘circumscription’, the two beings still retain their ontological integrity. This

movement is driven by a purpose different from a natural one: “The cause and the

ultimate purpose of the erotic movement in this case is nothing else (e.g., nature,

ideal, or even the relationship of love itself) than the concrete Other, in whom the

388
Ibid., 71.
389
See John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 72.
137
erotic movement stops and rests.”390

These two kinds of eros are naturally connected to two kinds of love. The

doctrine of love as an ontological concept is explained clearly by Zizioulas through

distinguishing the natural love from the love of God:

The love with which human beings love God really is uncreated…it is not part of their nature.
(‘Not that we should love God, but that He loved us’, I John 4.10). And human beings as
natures can of course love, but this love is always connected with some necessity (the
biological, moral or aesthetic attraction of the good)…The way in which the true uncreated (i.e.,
free) love also becomes the love of human beings, of creatures, is not through its becoming part
of their nature, part of the nature of the creature (this would have abolished the difference
between the natures of the created and the uncreated) but through its entering into relationship
with God, through its becoming enhypostasized in the relationship between the Father and the
Son. This is done by the hypostasis-person of the Son of God, who by his Incarnation and
subsequently through baptism in the Holy Spirit brings human beings freely into this
relationship, giving them in this way a new identity different from that which nature gives them
through their biological birth. For anyone to love God, then, is a matter of relationship (of
personhood) and not of nature…Thus God loves us not through our nature (or through His
nature) but through a person ([that of] Christ) and only in this way—through this person –can
we love him in turn.391

Zizioulas’ doctrine of love embodies a truth of personhood rather than a

substantialist truth. The purpose of Zizioulas’ distinction of two kinds of eros is to

emphasize that the uniquely loved being is a hypostasis or person rather than an

idea. Therefore, Zizioulas says: “Christ is the unique Other, the one in and through

whom all other beings are loved, not in a psychological but an ontological sense,

since it is in him that everything exists (Colossians 1. 16) and acquires its

particular identity.”392

4.4.4 A personal Christology breaking down totality

Levinas assails the logocentrism of Western thought. In this regard, Zizioulas is

390
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 72.
391
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 277-278.
392
Ibid., 75.
138
his ally because his personalism should be helpful for overcoming the totality of

Logocentrism. First of all, we need a theological revolution which must not

consider Christ primarily as a system of totality or a theory, but he is always

considered as a person.393 Therefore, this involves a renewal of Christology.

(a) Christ does not simply stand vis-à-vis each man, but constitutes the ontological

ground of every man. This means that Christ does not represent an individualized

and fragmented human nature, but represents humanity as a whole. Individualism is

a perversion of personhood and a falsification of true humanity in accordance with

this kind of Christology. Zizioulas criticizes an ethical Christology which offers

Christ as a model for imitation. Christology could not be of any help to

anthropology if it only offered Christ as the victim for the sins of humanity in a

substitutionary manner. Atonement understood in this way would not really affect

the human person’s being ontologically. Such a Christology may answer man’s

needs for forgiveness (in a legal sense) but does not really touch man’s being. The

key for anthropology is the ‘de-individualized’ Christ and man: “In order that

Christology may be relevant to anthropology, it must ‘de-individualize’ Christ, so

that every man may be ‘de-individualized’ too, and personhood may be

restored.”394

(b) Christology is pneumatologically conditioned in its very roots. It was in the

Spirit that the de-individualization of Christ’s humanity became possible. The

Spirit is not simply an assistant to the individual in reaching Christ, but he is also

participating in Christ.

It is a dead doctrine enforced upon the people’s minds by dogmaticians if it is

offered outside the anthropology of personhood. According to the Bible, the Son is

393
Roger Burggraeve ed., The Awakening to the Other: A Provocative Dialogue with Emmanuel
Levinas (Leuven; Dudley, MA: Peeters, 2008), 142.
394
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 244.
139
the unique hypostasis of the Father (Hebrews 1.3). This uniquely loved being is a

hypostasis which hypostasizes other beings. It does not exclude other particular

beings, and in fact it establishes their otherness in and through communion. It gives

them an identity, a hypostasis of their own. The Son of God is the true Other who

affirms Others. The restoration of personhood in Christology leads to both

communion and otherness.

4.4.5 A Trinitarian model for the coexistence of otherness and communion

According to the ontology of personhood, i.e., personhood precedes essence; the

doctrine of the Trinity gives us some revelation concerning our existence. The

Cappadocians locate the real distinctiveness of Father, Son, and Spirit in terms of its

relation of origin, and describe the uniqueness of each as personhood (hypostasis).

Hypostasis meant any concrete existing being in Greek philosophy. As long as

hypostasis and ousia were used interchangeably in Trinitarian theology, theology

will be built on the ground of totality and crystallized into a system. Therefore, the

individual is not apprehended in its otherness but in its generality. The relation with

the other is accomplished only through some ideas which an I learns from the Bible.

I cannot escape from egocentrism. However, when hypostasis is identified with

personhood, it means that the ultimate reality is personhood rather than substance.

This is a departure from Greek cosmology, making a personal God who is love and

freedom, rather than some impersonal principles, the Ultimate. Only this new

ontology could save theology from the control of classical Greek philosophy.

According to the Cappadocians, God the Father is the cause of everything and

God the Father is the source of otherness. In terms of the personal originating

principle, God the Father begets the Son and brings forth the Spirit and ultimately

also the world. Every particular exists in communion with others. “Since a person
140
is defined by relation of origin, the divine persons are never thought of as separate

from other, as discrete individuals.”395 The Trinitarian mode of existence is “the

highest, most perfect realization of personhood and communion: being-for-another

and from-another, or love itself.”396 The Trinitarian communion is the personal

expression and concrete existence of God. It is different from the unity of the divine

substance which is the starting point of Augustine’s theology. Because personhood

manifests a being as being-in-relation, not being-in-itself, it can escape the concept

of personhood as consciousness. The communion among persons will uphold the

essential equality of persons. It is not a movement within the sameness.397

Because Levinas’ theory does not depend on the Trinitarian God, but on one

Infinite, it is difficult for him to integrate the notions of communion with otherness.

However, the ontology of personhood grounded in Trinitarian theology is able to

combine personal communion with otherness.

395
Cathrine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 246.
396
Ibid.
397
See Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, 47.
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 Part III

Critical Assessment of Zizioulas’

Ontology of Personhood

142
 Chapter Five

Critique of substantialist view of God from

the perspective of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood

In Trinitarian theology, the unity of God can be grounded on either the Person of

the Father or the ousia of three persons. The developmental directions are different

between Eastern, Greek-speaking church Fathers and those in the Latin-speaking

West. The Catholic approach begins with the unity of the divine nature and then

attempts to explain the reality of the three persons. The Greek take the reverse route.

They begin with the three persons, emphatically with the person of the Father, and

then try to account for the divine unity.398

In the West, the contributions of St. Augustine (A.D. 354-430) became a

benchmark and source for those who followed. Rahner criticizes this typical

Western approach to the doctrine of God in his work, the Trinity, and he proposes a

return to the Greek patristic and biblical identification of God’s being with the

Father rather than the divine ousia.399 The Western idea of God causes at least three

problems in Trinitarian theology from the perspective of Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood:

the first is the separation of the oikonomia and theologia in the doctrine of God;

the second is the problem of the Filioque;

the third is that unity precedes diversity logically or ontologically in God.

Zizioulas discusses the second issue systematically, but only mentions an

opinion on the first question without much discussion,400 and he talks of the third

398
Philip A Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God (Michigan/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2007), 36.
399
Karl Rahner, The Trinity (London: Burns & Oates), 58.
400
Zizioulas focuses on the issue of Filioque. When he mentions the relation between ‘ecomonic’
and ‘immanet’, it is a critique of the view of Rahner (the economic Trinity is the same as the
immanent Trinity). He does not discuss the separation of the oikonomia and theologia in the doctrine
143
question in some fragments of his books. This chapter will attempt to evaluate these

problems based on Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood, and describes the

theological and philosophical significance of his ontology.

5.1 Western substantialist view of God

Ever since Tertullian, the Christian Trinity has always been depicted in the West

through the general concept of the divine substance: una substantia, tres personae,

i.e., one divine substance is constituted as three individual divine persons; the three

persons are different from one another, but they are one in their common divine

substance. For Tertullian, God is from all eternity One, but not alone. Because

Tertullian, like many others, never succeeds in defining his concept of being, it is

Augustine who gave the Western tradition its mature form.401 Thus we will start

from the Trinitarian theology of Augustine.

Because Augustine did not assimilate the achievement of the Cappadocians on

the doctrine of God, for him the ontological principle of God is the one divine

substance. Zizioulas criticizes that this interpretation prevails in Western theology

and unfortunately entered into modern Orthodox dogmatics. 402 Therefore, it is

important for him to bring up again the theological ontology of the Cappadocians.

In this section we will focus on the major Latin Christian thinkers who contribute to

the doctrine of the Trinity and raise questions for them.

5.1.1 Augustine (354-430): God as absolute being

For Augustine (354-430), God is by his essence pure actuality of being and

of God in Western theology. See John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 201-202.
401
Eric Osborn, Tertullian, First Theologian of the West (Cambridge; New York: Cambridge
University Press), 132-134.
402
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 40.
144
therefore cannot be conceived of as being with potency; he is above all simple and

perfect. In his book De Trinitate, Augustine introduces his famous psychological

analogies to the Trinity: the mind (mens), its knowing, and its love; later this gives

way in turn to memory, knowledge, and love of self (memoria sui, intelligentia sui,

voluntas sui).403 In Book 10, Augustine moves to an even higher image: memory,

understanding, and will (memoria sui, intelligentia sui, voluntas sui). In the

psychological triads, memory means more than recall, something more like one’s

perpetual sense of identity and presence to oneself; and self-knowledge is the key to

knowledge of God. Augustine writes, “When [the soul] seeks to know itself, it

already knows that it is seeking itself.”404 Memory, understanding, and will are not

three substances but one substance. And each faculty exhibits the characteristics

both of substance and of relation. He writes: “For not only is each [faculty]

comprehended by each one, but all are also comprehended by each one. For I

remember that I have memory, understanding and will; and I understand that I

understand, will and remember; and I will that I will, remember and understand;

and at the same time I remember my whole memory, understanding and will.”405

Augustine understands Trinity in terms of the categories of interiority and

conscious psychological experience.

Augustine distinguishes the concept of person from nature. Person is

“something singular and individual” in contrast with the nature which is held

in common.406 Concerning the distinction of the three persons, Augustine did not

follow the conceptual revolution of the Cappadocians. The direct reason given by

Augustine is the problem of translation: “The Greeks also have another word,

403
See Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P., ed. John E. Rotelle (Brooklyn, N. Y.: New
City Press, 1991), IX, 4, 273.
404
Ibid., Augustine, The Trinity, X, 5, 291.
405
Augustine, The Trinity, X, 18, 298-299.
406
Augustine, The Trinity VII, 11, 229.
145
hypostasis, but they make a distinction that is rather obscure to me between ousia

and hypostasis, so that most of our people who treat of these matters in Greek are

accustomed to say mia ousia, treis hypostaseis.”407 For the problem is that ousia is

translated into Latin as substantia (English ‘substance’, ‘essence’) which is not

distinguishable in Latin from hypostasis (literally, ‘standing under). Then

Augustine translates the three hypostaseis as “three substances or persons.”408 He

is not having a clear notion of ‘person’: “Yet when you ask ‘three what?’ human

speech labors under a great dearth of words. So we say three persons, not in order

to say that precisely, but in order not be reduced to silence.”409

Besides the linguistic usage, Gunton explains the other reason why Augustine

appears not to understand the Cappadoican conceptual revolution. Augustine asks a

different kind of question from that asked by the Cappadocians: “not, what kind of

being is this, that God is to be found in the relations of Father, Son and Spirit? But,

what kind of sense can be made of the apparent logical oddity of the threeness of the

one God in terms of Aristotelian subject-predicate logic? The one God is the

substance, being single and unchanging. There is no problem there in terms of the

philosophical tradition.”410

In Augustine’s Trinitarian theology, person is not without its relational aspect;

relationality is located within the divine essence. As William Hill notes that “the

fullest implications of Augustine’s thought are that God is one ‘person’ within

whose divine consciousness there is a threefold self-relatedness.”411 This will

influence Augustine’s anthropology directly to be one of individual consciousness

and its internal differentiations. Therefore, God would in fact be one person rather
407
Augustine, The Trinity V. 10, 196.
408
Augustine, The Trinity VII. 9, 227.
409
Augustine, The Trinity V. 10, 196.
410
Colin E. Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 40-41.
411
William Hill, The Three-Personed God: the Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation (Washington:
University Press of America, 1983), 61.
146
than three persons as propounded in the theology of the Cappadocians.

5.1.2 Boethius (480-524): one ousia and three substances

Boethius (480-525) was one of the most influential thinkers of the early medieval

period and wrote at least four philosophical-theological treatises on the doctrines of

the Trinity and the person of Jesus Christ. He interpreted the Augustinian tradition

of Trinitarian thought which sought to use Aristotelian categories to explain it.

Boethius tended to make greater use of speculation than did the early church

Fathers. This is because the medieval mind of the Latin West made little distinction

between philosophy and theology.412

Boethius summarizes the Trinitarian discussion: “there is one ousia or ousiosis,

i.e., one essence or subsistence of the Godhead, but three hypostaseis, that is three

substances.”413 Similarly, Boethius cannot understand the connotation of person in

Greek and he applies the substance to be predicated of God. While Augustine

adopted person as a better term than substances, the concept of ‘person’ is almost

completely absent in Boethius’ Trinitarian thought. Boethius’ discussion turns on

the treatment of relations.414

Boethius’ concept of ‘relation’ is articulated in terms of Aristotle’s categories, i.e.,

substance and nine kinds of accident. As Rolnick comments, “Although Boethius

declares the predication of God is unique and requires important changes from our

normal way of putting things, his count in De Trinitate IV begins with a listing of

Aristotle’s categories and never gets too far beyond them.”415 Relation is a logical

concept in Boethius’ Trinitarian thought: “it is evident that these terms are relative,

412
See Roger E. Olson and Christopher A. Hall, The Trinity, 51.
413
See Philip A Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God (Michigan/Cambridge: William B. Eerdmans
Publishing Company, 2007), 42.
414
Ibid., 42.
415
Ibid., 43.
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for the Father is someone’s Father, the Son is someone’s Son, the Spirit is someone’s

Spirit. Hence not even Trinity is predicated substantially of God.”416 It shows that

Boethius did not explicate the diversity of the three persons ontologically.

Though Boethius did not develop a concept of person in Trinitarian thought

clearly, he defined person in Christological terms. The view of person will be

understood from the relation of person and nature through Christological debates:

“For one thing is clear, namely that nature is a substrate of person, and that person

cannot be predicated apart from nature.”417 According to Aristotle’s primary and

second substances, Boethius sees primary substances, i.e., the particulars as persons.

Boethius defines ‘person’ as an ‘individual substance of a rational nature’. The

‘individual substance’ is a whole, distinguished from others but undivided in itself.

It has been applied widely in subsequent anthropology.

5.1.3 Thomas Aquinas (1225-74): God as the subsistent being

Thomas Aquinas (1226-1274) represents the central ethos of Latin theology. In

regard to the doctrine of the Trinity, Aquinas followed Augustine which makes the

divine essence the starting point. Aquinas affirmed that God is a substance:

simplicity or oneness, truth, goodness or perfection. For Aquinas, the unifying

divine nature is a rational–intellectual essence, i.e., an eternal mind without

temporal thought. God is both intellect and love. An intellectual nature requires

some degree of multiplicity in the same way that love does. The intellectual love of

the Father produces the Son and the Holy Spirit. In Trinity, it is a movement from

sheer simplicity to multiplicity.418

416
Boethius, De trinitate, 37; see also Philip A Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God, 43.
417
Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium 83; see also Philip A Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God,
37.
418
See Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Doctrine of God: A Global Introduction (Michigan: Baker
Academic, 2007), 96.
148
 In the book Summa Theologiae, Aquinas says that a divine person signifies a

relation as subsisting, that is, a hypostasis subsisting in the divine nature. 419

Concerning the relations of the persons to the divine substance, Thomas discusses

in Summa Theologiae I, 39-42. He thinks that pure ‘essence’ is the form of the

persons. According to the form rendering a thing what it is, the persons are decided

by the essence of God. The divine person is understood in terms of relation.

“However, a relation is in God not as an accidental entity in a subject, but it is the

divine nature itself, therefore it is something subsisting just as the divine nature is.

Consequently just as Godhead is God, so God’s Fatherhood is God the Father who

is a divine person. Hence ‘divine person’ signifies relation as something subsisting.

That is, as substance which is a hypostasis subsisting in the divine nature, though

what is subsisting in the divine nature is nothing other than the divine nature.”420

The person for Aquinas is an individualized substance. Aquinas’s metaphysical

or ontological analysis begins with a discussion of substance as the basis of

individuality. The particular and individual are found in rational substances

capable of self-determination.421 As Aquinas contends, the term ‘individual’ is

included in the definition of the person to signify a special mode of subsistence

proper to particular things or substances. 422 This question which concerns the

anthropology of Aquinas will be discussed in chapter six: Critique of Western

concept of personhood.

5.2 Critique from the perspective of the ontology of personhood

In the effort to describe the Latin Trinitarian traditions with the categories of

419
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I. Q. 29, a, 4.
420
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae. Ia.29. 4
421
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 29, a.1.
422
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, Q. 29, a. 1, a.3.
149
essence and person, I will analyze the consequences caused by the Western

traditional Trinitarian theology.

5.2.1 Separation of the oikonomia and theologia in Western substantialist

approach to Trinity

There is an inner connection between theologia and essence, oikonomia and

person. Theologia in the general sense is the doctrine of God considered in Godself.

Oikonomia is used for the action of God in the world in the doctrine of the

Incarnation. The correspondent English conventional expressions are the economic

and immanent Trinity.

The word oikonomia is from oikonomeo. Its secular meaning is of administering

and managing goods or a household, or overseeing an office according to some plan

or design.423 In New Testament, the word has at least two kinds of meaning. Firstly,

it means a steward (oikonomos) of God. For example, Paul calls himself a servant

of Christ and steward of God (1 Corinthians 4. 1); the bishop is called God’s

oikonomos: “A bishop, as God’s steward (oikonomos), must be blameless.” (Titus

1.7) Secondly, it is used to mean the plan of salvation, or how God administers

God’s plan. In Eph. 1:9-10 economy refers to the mystery of God’s benevolent

will or plan of salvation hidden from all eternity: “With all wisdom and insight

God has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure

that he set forth in Christ, as a plan (oikonomia) for the fullness of time, to gather

up all things in Christ, things in heaven and things on earth.” (Ephesians 1.9-10)

The term oikonomia was used broadly in the early church. According to the book

God for Us, there are three basic meanings. Firstly, oikonomia means God’s

423
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life (San Francisco: Harper
San Francisco, 1991), 24.
150
providential plan, dispensation, or ordering of the cosmos. Secondly, by the end of

the third century, oikonomia is narrowly understood as a synonym for Incarnation.

Thirdly, oikonomia means the “proportion and the coordination of constituent

element,” as in the distribution or “economizing” of godhead among the divine

persons. Before Arius, the flexible meaning of oikonomia supported a general

subordinationism of Jesus to God.424

For some theologians, the separation of oikonomia and theologia means a

priority of theologia over oikonomia or nature over person: “The basic difference

between Greek and Latin theology is often said to be that Greek theology

emphasizes person over nature, Trinity over unity, whereas Latin theology

emphasizes nature over person, unity over Trinity.”425 It will lead to some serious

issues such as its irrelevance for the practice of faith. Zizioulas seldom raises this

question. Catherine LaCugna provides a precise criticism of substantialist

theologians who separate the immanent Trinity from the economic Trinity.

First of all, Augustine’s approach leads to the breach between oikonomia and

theologia, as it is analyzed by Catherine Mowry LaCugna: “Augustine’s principle,

which follows logically from the starting point in the divine unity instead of the

economy of salvation, tends to blur any real distinctions among the divine persons

and thereby formalizes in Latin theology the breach between oikonomia and

theologia.”426

Along with the separation of theologia and oikonomia, Augustine influences the

direction of Christian theology in the West. Catherine LaCugna comments: “The

doctrine of the Trinity gradually would be understood to be the exposition of the

relations of God in se, with scarce concerning God’s acts in salvation history. After

424
Ibid., 25-26.
425
Ibid., 96-97.
426
Ibid., 99.
151
Augustine, in the period of scholasticism, ontological relationships among Father,

Son, and Holy Spirit would be viewed independently of the Incarnation and sending

of the Spirit.”427 Karl Rahner criticizes Aquinas and scholasticism in general for

developing a doctrine of the Trinity which excludes the activity of the persons in the

economy of salvation. In The Trinity Rahner writes:

This separation (in the Summa theologiae of the treatises on the One God and On the Triune)
took place for the first time in St. Thomas…here the first topic under study is not God the
Father as the unoriginate origin of divinity and reality, but as the essence common to all three
persons. Such is the method which has prevailed ever since. Thus the treatise of the Trinity
locks itself in even more splendid isolation, with the ensuing danger that the religious mind
finds it devoid of interest. As a result the treatise becomes quite philosophical and abstract and
refers hardly at all to salvation history.428

During the sixteenth century some new reflections on the Trinity begun by

Luther and Zwingli created the freedom to challenge Christian traditions. The

anti-Trinitarian movements from Spain and Italy and other parts of Europe

attempted to persuade Protestants to throw off traditional Catholic doctrines of

salvation, sacraments and the Trinity. One of the reasons is its irrelevance to the

practice of faith. Martin Luther and John Calvin reoriented theology toward the

experience of salvation which involves the economy of Trinity in order to avoid

‘the irrelevance to the practice of faith’.429

5.2.2 Divergence between East and West in dealing with oikonomia and

theologia

In late fourth century, in Cappadocian theology, there is a clear distinction

between oikonomia and theologia. The Cappadocians connects oikonomia with the

427
Ibid., 81.
428
Karl Rahner, The Trinity (London: Burns & Oates, 1986), 16-17.
429
Cf. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 144.
152
human nature of Christ,430 while theologia is connected with His divine nature.

They distinguish between oikonomia and theologia:

What is lofty you are to apply to the Godhead, and to that nature in him which is superior to
sufferings and to the body; but all that is lowly to the composite condition of him who for your
sake has been made of no account, is made flesh, and to say it even better, is made human and
who thereafter was exalted for your sake. By this you will abandon that which is carnal and
vulgar about these dogmas, in order to learn to be more sublime and to ascend with his Godhead,
so that you may not remain among visible things but may be elevated in order to be among
spiritual things, and so that you may comprehend that which is said of the [divine] nature and
that which is said of the economy [human nature].431

Because the doctrine of God could not be separated from salvation history or

economy, the Cappadocians use the concept of person (hypostasis) to express the

being of God. The concept of person can unite two natures. This is a ground for the

Christology of Chalcedon (451 A.D.): the union of two natures took place in the

person of Christ. The person is the ultimate identity. God exists eternally as Father,

Son, Spirit, and this eternal life is what is given in the redemption. The

Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocians brought about important changes in the

Christian doctrine of God. For the Cappadocians, ‘Theology’ is not limited on the

level of ousia. As I describe the ontological revolution in chapter one, the

Cappadocian formula, mia ousia, treis hypostaseis, manifests a precise distinction

between ousia and hypostasis. A theological distinction but not existential

separation is based on the hypostasis or person as an ontological category. The

divine ousia exists hypostatically and there is no ousia apart from the hypostasis. It

manifests a unity of oikonomia and theologia. Therefore, the relationship

between oikonomia and theologia is dialectical according to the Trinitarian

ontology of personhood.

Zizioulas expresses the relation between theologia and oikonomia in the light of

430
Basil, C. Eun. II, 3 (29, 577A); see also Catherine, God for Us, 39.
431
Gregory Nazianzus, Theological Orations, 29. 18.
153
the Cappadocian view: they stressed more than any of the ancient Fathers the

distinction, not separation, between theologia and oikonomia:

It is, therefore, essentially nothing other than a device created by the Greek Fathers to safeguard
the absolute transcendence of God without alienating Him from the world: the Economy must
not be understood as implying a loss of God’s transcendence, an abolition of all difference
between the immanent and the economic Trinity; at the same time, God’s transcendence must
be understood as a true involvement of the very being of God in creation.432

Therefore, the Eastern ontology of personhood overcomes the problem caused

by the separation of oikonomia and theologia through regarding the person

(hypostasis) as an ontological category.

Why Western theology takes a way which is different from that of East? The

most fundamental reason is that Augustine’s Trinitarian theology orients itself to

the analysis of human consciousness as the method for understanding the Trinity. It

is different from Eastern Greek theology which affirms the ontological distinction

of three persons. Today, a renaissance of the doctrine of the Trinity is taking place.

The representative axiom is Rahner’s formulation on the identity of the economic

and immanent Trinity: “The ‘economic’ Trinity is the ‘immanent’ Trinity and the

‘immanent’ Trinity is the ‘economic’ Trinity.”433 Against the deductive approach of

Augustine or Thomas Aquinas, Rahner takes the economy of salvation as the only

valid starting point for knowledge of God. Rahner develops a model of personal

God as the theological starting point: “We say: ‘of God,’ and we do not presuppose

thereby a ‘Latin’ theology of the Trinity (as contrasted with the Greek one), but the

biblical theology of the Trinity (hence, in a sense, the Greek one). Here God is the

‘Father,’ that is, the simply unoriginate God. ”434

Similarly, Zizioulas puts forward the question: is the economic Trinity the same

432
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 202.
433
Karl Rahner, The Trinity, 22.
434
Ibid., 83-84.
154
as the immanent Trinity? He regards that most Western theologians in our time call

for a positive answer, e.g., K. Barth, J. Moltmann and K. Rahner, but Zizioulas

thinks that the matter is not so simple. He approves of Y. Congar’s criticism of

Rahner’s position: “the economic Trinity…reveals the immanent Trinity—but does

it reveal it entirely? There is always a limit to this revelation.”435`

5.2.3 Western substantialist approach causing the problem of Filioque

The doctrine of the Holy Spirit has been one of the thorniest problems in

theology. Zizioulas provides an acute criticism of Western Filioque from the

perspective of his ontology of personhood.

There are two traditions, Eastern and Western, to understand the relationship

between the Holy Spirit and the Father: “the idea of the monarchy of the Father is

the sole ‘principle’ in God’s Trinitarian being promoted by the Greek Fathers, and

St. Augustine expresses that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father ‘principaliter’

[first and original cause]”.436

The Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (commonly called the Nicene Creed) of

the Second Ecumenical Council states that the Holy Spirit proceeds ‘from the

Father’, without additions of any kind, such as ‘and the Son’ or ‘alone’: “Καὶ εἰς τὸ

Πνεῦμα τὸ Ἅγιον, τὸ κύριον, τὸ ζῳοποιόν, τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον” (“And

in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, from the Father proceeding”).

Filioque [‘And (from) the Son’] means that the Latin text now in use in the

Western Church speaks of the Holy Spirit as proceeding ‘from the Father and the

Son’. Filioque is an addition to the creed of the Second Ecumenical Council as

early as the 8th century. It was accepted by the popes only in 1014, and is rejected

435
Y. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (New York: Seabury Press; London: G. Chapman, 1983) III,
16; see also John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 201.
436
John Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 41-42.
155
by the Eastern Church. The Filioque has been an ongoing source of conflict

between the East and the West, contributing in part to the East-West Schism of

1054 and proving to be an obstacle to attempts to reunify the two sides.437

Zizioulas discusses this issue in his book Communion and Otherness in

accordance with the theology of the Constantinople Council (A.D.381) on the Holy

Spirit. Zizioulas points out what he regards as the main issues lying behind the

Filioque problem. He further discusses this problem in his book The One and the

Many according to the document of the Pontifical Council for the Promotion of

Christian Unity. I will introduce his main ideas on this issue.

For Zizioulas, the problem of the Filioque involves the view of God: “the real

issue behind the Filioque concerns the question whether the ultimate ontological

category in theology is the person or substance.”438 Zizioulas asserts that the reason

of the Western interpretation lies in the assumption that the ontological principle of

God or the unity of God is not founded on the person but on the divine substance.

This is a misinterpretation of the Greek Patristic theology of the Trinity, says

Zizioulas, “Among the Greek Fathers the unity of God, the one God, and the

ontological ‘principle’ or ‘cause’ of the being and life of God does not consist in the

one substance of God but in the hypostasis, that is, the person of the Father.”439 If

the ultimate ontological category is not the hypostasis of the Father alone, then if

two hypostases are ultimate ontological categories at the same time this would

result in two gods. The Father is the only cause of the generation of the Son and the

procession of the Spirit. From this view, the East opposes the Filioque which has

been insisted by the West because the West identifies the ontological principle of

God with His substance rather than the person of the Father.

437
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filioque
438
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 196.
439
John Zizioulas, Being As Communion, 40.
156
5.2.4 Zizioulas’ reiteration of the Cappadocian notion of the Son’s mediation

in the procession of the Spirit

There are some efforts for theologians to solve the question of Filioque.

Zizioulas cites the view of Y. Congar: “the Western interpretation of the Filioque,

based on the theology of St Augustine, does not necessarily reject or exclude the

thesis that the Father is the only cause of divine existence in the holy Trinity.”440

But for Zizioulas, the issue of Filioque cannot be resolved by the term

‘principaliter’ of Augustine. Zizioulas queries: “Does the expression ‘principaliter’

necessarily preclude making the Son a kind of secondary cause in the ontological

emergence of the Spirit?”441 Zizioulas argues that the expression ‘principaliter’

does not necessarily preclude making the Son a kind of secondary cause in the

ontological emergence of the Spirit, for the Filioque means two sources of the

Spirit’s personal existence. The Father may be called the first and original cause

(principaliter), while the Son may be regarded as secondary (not principaliter)

cause, but still a ‘cause’ albeit not ‘principaliter’.

For Zizioulas, it is important to distinguish the idea of ‘cause’, ‘source’ and

‘principle’. “The term ‘cause’, when applied to the Father, indicates a free, willing,

and personal agent, whereas the language of ‘source’ or ‘principle’ can convey a

more ‘natural’ and thus impersonal imagery. This point acquires crucial

significance in the case of the Filioque issue.” 442 Zizioulas evaluates that the

Cappadocian idea of ‘cause’ was almost absent in Latin theological tradition, and

this for him is the reason which leads to the problem of Filioque.

St. Gregory of Nyssa admits a ‘mediate’ role of the Son in the procession of the

Spirit from the Father. Zizioulas concludes: “The notion of ‘cause’ seems to be of

440
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 197.
441
John Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 42.
442
Ibid., 42.
157
special significance and importance in the Greek patristic argument concerning the

Filioque. If Roman Catholic theology would be ready to admit that the Son in no

way constitutes a ‘cause’ in the procession of the Spirit, this would bring the two

traditions much closer to each other with regard to the Filioque.”443 It is done with

the help of the preposition δια (through) and the phrase ‘through the Son’ as St.

Maximus and other patristic sources suggest.

Zizioulas regards that the Filioque at the level of the economy of God presents no

difficulty to Eastern Orthodox theology, but the projection of this into the immanent

Trinity creates great difficulties. Besides the understanding that the economy

cannot be identified with immanent Trinity, the other reason for Zizioulas is that the

doctrine of Holy Spirit should be formulated in the light of the theology of the

Council of Constantinople. According to Zizioulas’ description, the doctrine of

Constantinople on the Holy Spirit involves three main theses:

I. The Holy Spirit is God.

II. The Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.

III. The Holy Spirit is worshipped and glorified together with the Father and

the Son.

These theses are to indicate that Holy Spirit has the same divinity with the Father

and the Son. Zizioulas argues that the pneumatological doctrine of Constantinople

is clear in these respects, and the Filioque is obviously an addition to the original

Creed.

Zizioulas argues that patristic sources show that the Son in some sense ‘mediates’

in the procession of the Spirit. Zizioulas emphasizes that the ‘mediation’ could not

be understood as another ‘cause’ in divine existence. That the Father remains the

only cause is the philosophical and theological presuppositions with which the

443
Ibid., 43.
158
Cappadocians operate in theology, and they influence the Fathers of Constantinople

precisely: “between the Alexandrian (cyrillian) tendency to involve the role of the

Son in the ousianic procession of the Spirit…and the Antiochene (Theodoretan)

tendency to limit the role of the Son in the coming into being of the Spirit to the

Economy, Gregory of Nyssa’s position seems to strike a middle road which does

more justice to the intention of the Fathers of Constantinople.” 444 In the

understanding of a mediating position of the Son in the eternal spiration of the

Spirit, Zizioulas distinguishes Gregory’s position with that of Cyril: Gregory

introduces the notion of ‘cause’ which he clearly reserves to the Father alone and

put the Son and the Spirit on equal footing. Unlike Cyril, Gregory does not take the

ousianic or ‘natural’ relation of the Spirit to God as one of the relationship with the

Father. The Cappadocian Fathers, representing a third way between the

Alexandrians and the Antichochenes, has not been fully appropriated by the West.

Zizioulas analyzes the possible historical reasons at this point. “These may have to

do with the fact that the Council of Constantinople in 381 was exclusively an

Eastern council, with no participation from the Western Church, although it was

later formally recognized by it as an ecumenical council. It must also relate to the

fact that Augustine’s theology dominated the West soon after the Cappadocians.”445

Zizioulas points out that an interpretation of the Council’s teaching in light of

Cappadocian theology will lead to the following conclusion: the phrase ek tou

Patros,

(a) does not exclude a mediating role of the Son in the procession of the Spirit,

(b) does not allow for the Son to acquire the role of aition by being a mediator, and

(c) does not allow any detachment of divine ousia from the Father (or from the other persons of

444
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 193.
445
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 124, see footnote, 39.
159
 the Trinity): when we refer to ousia we do not refer in any way to something conceivable

besides the persons, that is, we do not refer to an impersonal ousia.446

Through this conclusion, Zizioulas excludes any attempt to define the content of

this mediation of the Son by making him some kind of secondary cause or by

distinguishing between personal and ousianic levels of operation, for these are not

from either Constantinople or the Cappadocians.447

Overall speaking, there are four kinds of expression about the procession of the

Spirit:

(a) Father is primary cause; Son secondary cause.

(b) Father and Son both are the same causes on ousianic level.

(c) Father is sole cause, Son has no role.

(d) Father is sole cause; Son has a mediating role.

Zizioulas regards that the Filioque problem involves an absolute and

indispensable existential truth, namely, the ontological ultimacy of the person of the

Father. So he definitely rejects (a) and (b). However, for him, we can accept (d)

instead of (c) in order to recognize the element of truth in the Filioque phrase.

5.2.5 Substantialism dictates that unity precedes diversity logically or

ontologically in God

Ever since Tertullian, the Christian Trinity has always been depicted through the

general concept of the divine substance: una substantia-tres personae, i.e., one

divine substance is constituted as three individual divine persons; the three persons

are different from one another, but they are one in their common divine substance.

For Augustine and Thomas Aquinas this one, common, divine substance is counted

446
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 194-195.
447
Ibid., 195.
160
as the foundation of the Trinitarian persons, and this substance was ontologically

and logically primary in the formulation. Eastern theology criticizes this view for

making essence or substance of God into a fourth category prior to the threeness of

the Trinity. Furthermore, the psychological model for the Trinity is located ‘inside

the head of the one individual, in the structures of the mind’s intellectual love of

itself’.448 It influences theological anthropology directly, for the imago Dei has also

been located in the human intellect and reason and this leads to an individualistic

concept of human personhood. As Kaiser comments on Augustine: “the complete

dissociation of eternal intra-Trinitarian relations from ordinary human relations

forced him into a rather static concept of deity, on the one hand, and an

individualistic concept of humanity, on the other.”449 It seems that the ontological

revolution of personhood has not been accepted by Augustine. The Greek

substantialist approach dominates Augustine’s Trinitarian theology and

anthropology. Augustine’s influence continues to shape the thoughts of Boethius

and Thomas Aquinas.

Since Aquinas, the article of faith on God has been shared in the treatise De Deo

uno and the treatise De Deo trino. This two-fold division means that there is a God

and that God is one, only after that comes the Trinity.
Trinitarian theology involves in its basic structure the problem of the relation between unity and
diversity in the form of the ontological relation between the One and the Many. The faith in
‘one’ God who is at the same time ‘three,’ i.e. ‘many,’ implies that unity and diversity coincide
in God’s very being. The question whether unity precedes diversity logically or ontologically in
God is of crucial importance. Medieval theology succumbed to the logic of essentialism or
substantialism, which inherited from classical Greek thought, and gave priority in dogmatics to
the chapter ‘De Deo uno’, which received precedence over that of ‘De Deo Trino.’ God,
logically speaking, is first ‘one’ and then ‘many.’ This theological monism is the equivalent to

448
Colin Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 94; see also Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian
Theology: West and East, 120.
449
C. B. Kaiser, The Doctrine of God: An Historical Survey (London: Crossway Books, 1982), 81;
see also Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 120.
161
 the philosophical monism that characterized ancient Greek thought from the Pre-Socratics to
Neoplatonism.450

In Barth’s theology, God is the subject of his own being and his own revelation.

Barth emphasizes one personal God to replace a static concept of God in traditional

substantialist language. However, on the relationship between ‘one and many’, it is

still the same as the substantialist approach. As Collins comments: “Thus, while

Barth is rooted in the tradition of the West, he makes significant moves towards the

tradition of the East…[However], Barth does not develop an explicit ontology of

the particular (hypostasis) in the same way as the Eastern tradition does.” 451

Logically speaking, the lordship of God still precedes the Trinity.

Although the Trinitarian mainstream of Western tradition is based on the analogy

of the human soul or mind, there is an alternative social analogy of the Trinity too.

The representative is Richard of St Victor, Hugh’s student, who shared his teacher’s

approach to emphasize the distinctive works in the Trinity in the eleventh century.

Richard found a personalist orientation in Augustine’s doctrine of the Trinity. In his

book De Trinitate, he argues that the doctrine of the Trinity could not possibly be

understood in relation to a single isolated individual person.452 The divine persons

are distinguished by their relations of love. The unity of essence is required by

the perfect love between persons. His precondition is that “perfect love is always

directed toward what is distinct from and in some sense outside the self. Self-love is

imperfect love. God’s love must be perfect and not in any way dependent upon the

creation. Thus, God’s love must be other-directed within God himself.”453

Concerning Richard’s concept of personhood, different comments have been

cited by Collins in his book. For example, O’Donnell affirms that “Richard

450
John Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 336.
451
Ibid., 227.
452
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Doctrine of God: A Global Introduction (Michigan: Bbaker
Academic, 2007), 98.
453
Ibid., 98
162
preserves the Boethian accent upon substantiality but he complements this idea

with that of relationality.” 454 In contrast, T. F. Torrance argues that Richard’s

concept of person is against that of Boethius and it is “derived ontologically from

the doctrine of the Trinity.”455 Moltmann argues that one’s existence is understood

in the light of another, and this ‘another’ can be explained on two levels: the divine

nature and the other persons: “it is true that in the first place he related this other to

the divine nature. But it can be related to the other Persons too”;456 Collins argues

that Richard’s theology is founded on a social model of the Trinity, but Richard’s

concept of personhood is still related to Boethius’ definition of personhood.457

It is not easy to understand Richard’s idea because his book On the Trinity has

never been fully translated into modern English. There are different views about the

starting point of his Trinitarian theology. Kärkkäinen concludes that “Richard

began with the persons of the Father, Son, and Spirit and with human persons in

community.”458 But William Hill concludes that Richard’s On the Trinity “begins

with God in the oneness of his nature, but stresses love as the most distinctive and

identifying trait of that nature.”459 Anyway, Richard’s idea of sociality in God has

been enthusiastically accepted among thinkers as diverse as liberation theologians,

feminists, and Jürgen Moltmann.460

In the nineteenth century, the social analogy of the Trinity was used by those who

wish to modify or challenge the psychological model of Idealist understanding of

the Absolute, such as Hartshorne461, Joseph Bracken462, and Rahner.463 Rahner’s

454
O’Donnell, The Mystery of the Triune God (New York: Paulist Press, 1989), 101; See also Paul M.
Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 138.
455
T. F. Torrance, Theological Science (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), 306.
456
Jürgen Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom of God, 173.
457
Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 138.
458
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Doctrine of God, 98
459
William, J. Hill, The Three-Personed God, 78.
460
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, The Doctrine of God, 99.
461
For an exposition of Hartshorne’s understanding see C. E. Gunton, Becoming and Being: The
Doctrine of God in Charles Hartshorne and Karl Barth (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978),
163
dependence upon the concept of the Absolute Subject of Hegelian thought does not

necessarily sustain the psychological model like Augustine does. Rahner describes

the Trinity in the divine self-revelation as threefoldness rather than oneness.464

Rahner criticizes that the psychological model leads to an understanding of the

Godhead as ‘absolute identity’.465

But questions arise in relation to the social analogy too, especially because there

is a tendency to ascribe self-consciousness to each of the three divine persons.

Collins comments that those who have worked with either model had sought to

relate consciousness to both the threeness and the oneness of the Godhead, with

concepts such as intersubjectivity, interpersonality, and shared consciousness.466

Though Barth and Rahner realized that the psychological model had not expressed

the revealed knowledge of the Godhead, yet as Collins criticizes: “In their

terminology for threefoldness and in their concept of the deity as Subject, both have

failed to escape from the predominating influence of the Western conceptuality of

the core ego.”467 I will criticize the understanding of person as self-consciousness

in chapter six.

As we see above, in Latin theology of the Augustine-Boethius-Thomas line and

its heirs today, the unity of God lies in the divine substance or the absolute subject

shared by the three persons. Then persons and relations have been formulated in

terms of the attributes such as oneness and simplicity. One God is a divine

substance or the absolute subject. This approach gives priority to ‘unity’ over

75-76.
462
J. Bracken, The Triune Symbol: Persons, Process, and Community (Lanham: University Press of
America, 1985), 48-57.
463
See Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 152-154.
464
Rahner, The Trinity, 106; see also Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 154.
465
Rahner, The Trinity, 117.
466
Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 154.
467
Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 155-156.
164
‘diversity’.468 The key reason is that the concept of otherness is not regarded as an

ontological category. As Zizioulas comments: “In classical and modern Western

theology, the person never played the role of an ultimate ontological category, due

to the tendency to place the person of the Father under the ontological priority of

the ‘one God’, that is of divinity in general.”469

5.3 Theological and philosophical significance of the ontology of

personhood
For Zizioulas, the ontology of personhood is not only a response to various

heretical ideas of their time. It also produces “a philosophical landmark, a

revolution in Greek philosophy.”470 It is an ontological revolution which assumes

that ‘person’ is prior to ‘substance’ in Trinitarian ontology. In philosophy, “to give

ontological primacy to the person would mean to undo the fundamental principles

with which Greek philosophy had operated since its inception, (i.e., One).”471 Let

us further examine this issue from four aspects.

Firstly, ‘One God’ is God the Father rather than one substance, “that is, of the

self-existent and in the final analysis individualistic being.” 472 Gregory of

Nazianzus rejects Plato’s notion which speaks of God as a crater: this crater

overflows with goodness and love by a process of natural or substantial and

necessary generation of existence. Gregory departs from the Athanasian idea of the

‘fertile substance of God’ too. He does not see the generation of the Son or the

spiration of the Spirit in such terms as a way of substantial growth. He insists with

the rest of the Cappadocians that the Father is the cause of divine existence and the

468
Cf. Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 248.
469
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 198
470
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 36.
471
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 164.
472
Ibid., 162.
165
three-personed God create the world jointly. Thus, ‘One God’ is not understood in a

Platonic or Aristotelian sense. The one arche (origin or cause) in God came to be

understood in terms of origination of being. By stressing the role of the Father as

the cause of divine being, generation and spiration are not necessary but free.

God the Father is the ‘willing one’,473 the only cause of divine existence.

Secondly, the Cappadocian Fathers challenged classical Greek thought through

their Trinitarian theology: true being or the ultimate metaphysical or ontological

state is to be found in God, i.e., the ‘One’ and the ‘Many’ exist simultaneously in

God. The premise is that the person has to be given ontological primacy in

philosophy.474 God in Trinity involves simultaneously the ‘One’ and the ‘Many’.

Ancient Greek thought ever since pre-Socratic philosophers and up to

Neoplatonism tended to give priority to the ‘One’ over the ‘Many’. For example, in

Plato’s Eternal Ideas, all reality is one, with finite beings as manifestations of the

absolute One. The particular person never has an ontological role. Neoplatonism

had identified the ‘One’ with God himself. One emanates Many of a degrading

nature, so that the return to the ‘One’ through the recollection of the soul was

thought to be the purpose and aim of all existence. Philo links classical Platonism

and Neoplatonism and argues that God is the only ‘One’ because he is the only One

who is truly ‘alone’. The Cappadocians explain that the priority of nature over

person, or of the ‘One’ over the ‘Many’ is due to the fact that human existence is a

different existence from that of God, and the way of human existence should not

decide or result in an ultimate metaphysical or ontological principle.

Thirdly, the Cappadocians “gave to the person ontological priority, and thus

freed existence from the logical necessity of substance.”475 Zizioulas regards that

473
Gregory Naz., Theol. Or. 3.5-7.
474
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 163-164.
475
Ibid., 165.
166
there is an ontological necessity in Greek worldview:
This ontological monism which characterizes Greek philosophy from its inception leads Greek
thought to the concept of the cosmos, that is, of the harmonious relationship of existent things
among themselves. Not even God can escape from this ontological 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 world to him, either through the creation of Plato’ Timaeus or through the
476
Logos of the Stocis or throuth the ‘emanations’ of Plotinus’ Enneads.

The personal ontology traces the world back to an ontology outside the world,

that is, a personal God who transcends the necessity of Greek cosmology and

substantialism. Zizioulas asserts that the Cappadocians reversed the Greek ways of

thinking, for the Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocian Fathers involved a

philosophy in which the particular was not secondary to being or nature. Thus the

particular is free in an ultimate sense.

Lastly, the particular person never has an ontological identity in classical Greek

thought: “What mattered ultimately was the unity or totality of being of which man

was but a portion.” 477 Concerning the anthropological consequences of the

ontology of personhood, I have discussed them in Chapter three and will discuss its

critique of Western concept of personhood in the next chapter (Chapter Six).

476
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 29-30.
477
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 164.
167
 Chapter Six

Critique of the Western concept of personhood from the

perspective of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood

In Western traditional anthropology, ‘personhood’ is an individualist concept.

Because nature or ousia express the general, personhood usually signifies the

individual substance. Otherness is not an ontological concept. This is the

substantialist approach which keeps substance at the forefoot. This kind of view of

personhood can be traced to Augustine, Boiethus, and Aquinas. From the

perspective of a relational view of personhood, Zizioulas criticizes the Western

concept of personhood. In this chapter, discussion will be divided into three

sections: (1) Exposition of Augustine, Boethius, and Aquinas’ concepts of

personhood. (2) Criticism from the perspective of the ontology of personhood. (3)

Analysis of Zizioulas’ criticisms.

6.1 The concept of person in Western anthropology

6.1.1 Augustine (354-430): person as consciousness

The early Augustine constructs a Christian anthropology in a work written

shortly after his conversion to Christianity: The Catholic and Manichaean Ways of

Life (composed between 388-390). In his response to the question ‘what is man?’

Augustine stresses that soul and body are essential components of human nature

and emphasizes the superiority of the soul over the body. In one of his initial

anthropological formulations, he defined the soul as “a certain kind of substance

sharing in reason, fitted to rule the body.” 478 His Christian anthropology is

478
Augustine, De Quantitate Animae 13, 22. Cf. Joseph Torchia, O.P., Exploring Personhood: An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.,
2008), 115, 109-110.
168
developed within the Neoplatonic framework. Human nature presupposes a

“harmonious union” of the inner man of the spirit and the outer man of the flesh.

Augustine focuses on the mind or intellect, the highest part of our rational nature, as

the bearer of God’s image. This reflects a distinct intellectualist emphasis.

The mature Augustine introduces the term persona into his anthropological

lexicon. He sees that the composite unity of soul and body constitutes not only the

human being but an individual person in his or her own right. It underscores a

transition from talking about the general (what we all share in common) to a

recognition of the uniqueness of each and every human being.479

Augustine finds the image of the triune God in the human person. His use of the

psychological analogies in terms of our conscious experience of the mental acts of

knowing and living was fundamentally based on the biblical understanding of the

human person as created in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). As we have stated in

chapter five, Augustine’s failure to understand the Greek terminological consensus

results in a failure to understand the conceptual revolution that terminology implies.

For Augustine, the conception of ‘person’ in Trinity lacks an ontological grounding.

He distinguishes person, which is “something singular and individual,” from nature

which is held in common.480 Augustine appeals to psychological understanding as

the model for the Trinity. This influences not only the doctrine of the Trinity, but

also the understanding of the human person.481

Augustine develops the concept of person in his book Confessions. Augustine

has been reluctant to use ‘persona’, but he presents a phenomenology of human

consciousness that has now become one of the central features of our contemporary

479
See Joseph Torchia, O.P., Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human
Nature (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2008), 113.
480
Augustine, The Trinity, trans. Edmund Hill, O.P. (Brooklyn, N. Y.: New City Press, 1991), VII. 11,
229.
481
Gunton, Promise of Trinitarian Theology, 102; see also Augustine, The Trinity, XIV. 15, 383.
169
notion of person. In many ways, to ask about human personhood is to ask himself:

“I became for myself a great question.”482 Thus, Augustine utilizes the method of

introspective self-reflection to explore the freedom, intellect, feelings, desires, and

love in human consciousness. The most significant characteristic of a person here is

his or her self-consciousness.

6.1.2 Boethius (480-524): person as individual and rational substance

Boethius explains ‘person’ in terms of Aristotle’s category of substance: there are

particular (Aristotle’s ‘primary’) and universal (Aristotle’s ‘secondary’) substances,

only the particular substances can qualify as persons: “person cannot anywhere be

predicated of universals, but only of particulars and individuals, for there is no

person of man as animal or a genus; only of Cicero, Plato, or other single

individuals are single persons named.”483 Thus, the concept of person focuses on

the individual reality. Boethius’ definition of person is: “The individual substance

of a rational nature”.484 An “individual substance” suggests that a person is a whole,

distinguishable from others but undivided in itself. The “rational nature”

distinguishes humans, God, and angel from all other sorts of individual substance.

Therefore, the concept of person has been applied to man, God and angel, but we do

not predicate person of a stone, tree, or horse. This definition has been formed in his

Christological discussion. For Boethius, the correct understanding of Christology

depends upon a clear understanding of nature and person.

Firstly, for Boethius, substance is prior to person. “For one thing is clear, namely

that nature is a substrate of person, and that person cannot be predicated apart

482
Augustine, Confessions, trans. Henry Chadwick (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), IV. Iv.
9, 115.
483
Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, 85; cf. Philip Rolnich, Person, Grace, and God, 38.
484
Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium, 85; cf. Philip Rolnich, Person, Grace, and God, 39.
170
from nature.”485 Indeed, person is properly predicated of substance: “Since person

cannot exist apart from nature and since natures are either substances or accidents

and we see that person cannot consist in accidents, it therefore remains that person

is properly predicated of substances.”486

Secondly, the definition of the human person depends upon our understanding of

the person of Christ. For Boethius, an analogy is present between human persons

and the person of Christ. Against Nestorius, whom he understood as believing in

the existence of two persons in Christ, Boethius insists that the reality of Christ is

the reality of the union, i.e., the person unifies. In human persons, the union

includes different components, such as the body, emotions, soul, thoughts,

commitments, actions, and relationships.487

6.1.3 Thomas Aquinas (1225-74): person as a subsistent individual

Like Augustine, Aquinas refines the concept of human personhood in the course

of theological discussion on the Trinity and the person of Jesus. As Joseph Torchia

writes: “Interesting, Aquinas’s most explicit discussion of personhood in the Summa

Theologica does not emerge in his Treatise on Human Nature. Rather, it unfolds in

the course of his treatment of the Trinity and his analysis of the relations between

the Persons of the Trinity.”488 For Aquinas, personhood means a unique individual.

He distinguishes personhood from human nature: “Person in any nature signifies

what is distinct in that nature: thus in human nature it signifies this flesh, these

bones, and this soul, which are the individuating principles of a man, and which,

though not belonging to person in general, nevertheless do belong to the meaning

485
Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium 83; cf. Philip Rolnich, Person, Grace, and God. 37.
486
Boethius, Contra Eutychen et Nestorium 83; cf. Philip Rolnich, Person, Grace, and God. 38.
487
See Philip Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God, 41.
488
Joseph Torchia, Exploring Personhood: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature
(New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2008), 140.
171
of a particular human person.”489

Aquinas refines the definition of person along Boethius’s lines: “A person is a

subsistent individual in a rational nature.”490 Therefore, Aquinas links the notion

of individualized substance with the definition of the person. The term individual is

included in the definition of the person to signify a special mode of subsistence

proper to particular things or substance. In contrast with Boethius’s definition,

Aquinas’ definition understands a subsistent reality in this way: “What is composed

of this form has the nature of …person. For soul, flesh, and bone belong to the

nature of man; whereas this soul, this flesh, and this bone belong to the nature of

this man.”491 The subsistent reality is the primary sense of the human substance.

The significance of ‘subsistent reality’ can be understood through Aquinas’

definition of the composite of human beings. He defines humans as composites of

the formal principle of the soul and the material substrate of the body. It

presupposes a new metaphysical vision which focuses upon being or existence as

the ultimate perfection of a given thing. In this respect, Aquinas moves beyond the

limitations of the static essentialist ontology which dominates the anthropologies of

Plato and Aristotle for Aquinas regards existent reality as a dynamic act.

For Aquinas, the human person is a dynamic being that actualizes the potentiality

for certain operations unique to his or her own existence. The person has an

intrinsic value and dignity because the person participates in a hierarchy of being in

which God provides the first cause and final end of everything which exists.

Persons possess a status by virtue of their relation to God as creatures in his image

and likeness. The difference between persons and other creatures is that persons are

able to internalize reality through their intellect and even grasp something of the

489
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica Ia, Q. 29, a. 4.
490
Ibid., Ia, Q. 29, a. 3.
491
Aquinas, Summa Theologica Ia, Q. 29, a. 2, ad.3.
172
infinite majesty of God.

Aquinas stresses the hypostatic union of God and man in Christ. The union is

neither located in the divine or human nature, nor in some accidental attribute of the

God-man. A union is “mid-way, in a subsistence or hypostasis.”492 Therefore, there

are two levels in Aquinas’ discussions of personhood. He defines personhood

sometimes in terms of our individual uniqueness, and at other times in terms of our

relation to the persons of God. A question naturally arises: is the concept of

personhood an individual or relational concept? This answer must be addressed in

terms of its metaphysical foundation. For Aquinas, the body is the individual

principle of a man, and the human soul is the primary metaphysical principle of the

essence of human nature. So on the whole, his concept of personhood is still an

individualist concept.

6.2 Criticism from the perspective of the ontology of personhood

For Zizioulas, personhood is a relational concept which is contrasted with the

Western individualist concept of ‘person’. According to the ontology of personhood,

Zizioulas criticizes the Western view of person with regard to three aspects. I try to

understand his opinions and put forward some criticisms.

6.2.1 Individualism in the view of personhood: there is no otherness and

communion

For the ontology of communion, personhood is a gift coming from God;

personhood is otherness in communion, and communion in otherness. By contrast,

in the Western tradition, ‘personhood’ is an individualist concept. Zizioulas

explains how personhood as consciousness was formed in the Western theological

492
Ibid., IIIa, Q. 2, a. 6.
173
tradition. He writes:
With the help of a cross-fertilization between the Boethian and the Augustinian approaches to
man, our Western philosophy and culture have formed a concept of man out of a combination
of two basic components: rational individuality on the one hand and psychological experience
and consciousness on the other. It was on the basis of this combination that Western thought
arrived at the conception of the person as an individual and a personality, that is, a unit
endowed with intellectual, psychological and moral qualities centred on the axis of
consciousness.493

However, there is a distinction between modern understanding of

self-consciousness and the classical Greek understanding.494 Zizioulas writes: “The

ancient Greeks did not operate in anthropology with the notion of subject, that is, of

the self as thinking its own thoughts and as being conscious of itself and

preoccupied with its own ‘intentions’.”495 Zizioulas claims that the introspective

way in Augustinian tradition has affected the Western mind and modern Orthodox

through the confusion between ontology and psychology in our ordinary way of

thinking, i.e., consciousness and subjectivity are treated as fundamental

anthropological categories. These individualist concepts dominate our

understanding and discourse of selfhood, and the human being is ultimately only an

isolated self, a centre of consciousness which is essentially separated from other

centres of consciousness. In fact, in the introspective tradition, how to prove the

existence of other minds or other consciousness has become an epistemological

conundrum. All these steer us away from a proper understanding of person as

493
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 211.
494
Socrates’ work is an important beginning of the individualistic legacy. Socrates’ individual self-
independence from the community in which he lived set an important precedent for the way in
which a person could conceive of himself or herself as a separate and distinct being. But his
individualism was defined in terms of social roles. Modern philosophy has in fact developed a
concept of the individual that is far more solitary than that created by Socrates and the Antiquity.
The philosopher who first formulated the idea of this solitary self was Rene Descartes (1596-1650).
He has become known as ‘the father of modern philosophy’. See website:
http://faculty.frostburg.edu/phil/forum/Descartes.htm (KKM: but you have already discussed
Descartes before. Sometime the order of your discussions can be more systematic & logical thought
the problem here is not very great.)
495
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 46.
174
communion.496

The human being is ultimately a Self, a centre of consciousness in our ordinary

way of thinking. The human person is generally defined by the ability to think of

himself, and the person as the individual self-consciousness is basically

incommunicable. The person and mind continues to be identified with each other in

the modern view. In modern psychology, personhood can be understood as a

self-conscious, free centre of action. This personhood is often understood further in

terms of an individual personality.

Stanley J. Grenz also regards the idea of ‘self’ as a modern invention and agrees

that it can be traced back to Augustine: “The trajectory that gave rise to the modern

self begins with Augustine. Building from the Greek dictum ‘Know thyself,’

Augustine transposed the focus of the search for self to the realm within.” 497

Augustine’s emphasis on the inward journey, the quest for self-knowledge, also led

to the concept of the self as the stable, abiding reality that constitutes the individual

human being.

From the book of Augustine, we can find that he defines ‘person’ in terms of

‘consciousness’ or ‘mind’: “Any single man, who is not called the image of God

in terms of everything that belongs to his nature but only in terms of his mind is

one person and is the image of the Trinity in his mind. But that Trinity he is the

image of is nothing but wholly and simple Trinity…three persons of one being,

not like any single man, just one person.”498 There is the problem of an improper

analogy used by Augustine between God and man. Augustine appeals to a

psychological understanding as the model for the Trinity. A. C. Lloyd succinctly

496
Ibid., 46.
497
Stanley J. Grenz, ‘The Social God and the Relational Self’, in Richard Lints, Michael S. Horton
and Mark R. Talbot ed., Personal Identity in Theological Perspective (Cambridge: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2006), 71-72.
498
Augustine, The Trinity XV, 11, 403.
175
notes that Augustine “did not accept the opportunity of making an analogy

between the interior relationships of the Trinity and exterior or mutual

relationships of human persons.” 499 Conversely, the model for the Trinity is

based on a single human mind. Gunton argues, “[Augustine] cannot escape an

individualistic concept of the person.”500

It produces huge influences on the whole Western philosophy and society: the

individualist concept of the person is so pervasive in modern Western society. In the

Christian tradition it is generally accepted that Augustine is the original protagonist

of such a concept of personhood. It is transmitted into the Middle Ages through

Boethius, and is accepted by Aquinas. It is also the expression of a substantialist

understanding of personhood. It tends towards a view of the divine persons and the

person of human as singular and isolated in an individualistic sense.

Augustine’s influence is not only confirmed to the churches. His psychological

analogy of God and phenomenological analysis of human consciousness influences

Descartes’ understanding of the human person as mind. The ‘Father of Modern

Philosophy’, Descartes (1956-1650) writes: “I am thinking, therefore I exist”

[cogito ergo sum]. The phrase became a fundamental element of Western

philosophy, as it was perceived to provide a foundation for all knowledge. Much

subsequent Western philosophy is a response to his writings. A transformation of

the old ontological paradigm into a new subject-centered perspective lies at the core

of both the Cartesian epistemological and Kantian transcendental turn. For

Descartes, the real person is to be identified with thought, and therefore with ‘mind’.

Mind is understood to be non-material. Kant’s philosophy further emphasizes the

tendency of the ‘turn to the subject’, which presupposes a necessary relation

499
A. C. Lloyd, “On Augustine’s Concept of a Person,” in Augustine: A Collection of Critical Essays,
ed. R. A. Markus (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Books, 1972), 204.
500
Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 95.
176
between personhood and subjectivity. Because the noumenal realm can never be the

object of knowledge, philosophy is understood as several forms of the quest for

self-knowledge: what can I know? (Metaphysics); what ought I do (Morals); what

might I hope? (Religions).501

Because of the analogy of being, this conception has been applied to God. In the

traditional metaphysical language of the theologians, God is understood as the

Supreme Substance. Later, under the impact of the Enlightenment, which

understands human personhood as a subject of consciousness, the divine person is

understood as the Absolute Subject in theology. For example, Barth affirms that

God is subject only, never object.502 God is known through an Event, i.e., the event

of revelation. Indeed, God is himself the event of revelation because he is the

subject (God reveals), the content (God reveals himself), and the very happening

(God reveals himself).503 Revelation is necessarily Trinitarian:

The statement ‘God is one in three modes of being, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit’ thus means
that the one God, i.e., the one Lord, the one personal God, is what he is not in one mode only
but—we appeal in support simply to the result of our analysis of the Biblical concept of
revelation-in the mode of the Father, in the mode of the Son, in the mode of the Holy Spirit.504

God is one divine Person with three modes of existing. Barth understands person

in the modern terms of self-consciousness and freedom and he fails to deal with the

concept of hypostasis in terms of the ‘relations of communion’.505 This approach to

Trinitarian theology provides no justification for the independent existence of the

Son and the Spirit as persons in the Trinity. Therefore, there exists only one Person

and one subjectivity in Barth’s Trinitarain theology, and Moltmann criticizes that

Barth’s theology is in fact rooted in the idealist tradition of the single self-conscious

501
For example, see Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (1781); Critique of Practical Reason
(1788); Critique of Judgment (1790).
502
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, II/2, 438.
503
Ibid., 339.
504
Ibid., 413.
505
Paul M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology: West and East, 223.
177
divine subject.506 Gunton claims that Barth’s usage of tropos hyparxeos keeps him

enclosed in the Western tradition of the Trinity and personhood, rather than setting

him in the Cappadocian tradition.507

Similarly, Rahner regards that it is difficult for us to use the modern meaning of

person to understand the Trinity as three divine persons because this would suggest

“three consciousnesses.” Therefore, he uses “threefold subsistence in one

consciousness” instead of “three persons”:

But there are not three consciousnesses; rather, the one consciousness subsists in a threefold
way. There is only one real consciousness in God, which is shared by Father, Son, and Spirit,
by each in his own proper way. Hence the threefold subsistence is not qualified by three
consciousnesses. The subsistence itself is as such not personal, if we understand this word in
the modern sense.508

All types of Personalism, both in America and in Europe, as a philosophical

movement have their common basis the concept of consciousness, on which they

found the concept of the person. Boston’s personalist Brightman defines person as

“a complex unity of consciousness, which identifies itself with its past self in

memory, determines itself by its freedom, is purposive and value-seeking, private

yet communicating, and potentially rational.”509

Overall speaking, it seems correct for Zizioulas to criticize Augustine’s and other

philosophers’ concept of personhood as an individualist concept. As a result, the

question of theological and philosophical anthropology has characteristically been

framed as the question of the self rather than the question of the other. This

unbalanced perspective may well have contributed to the imbalance and

undesirable consequences in our culture. I will discuss this issue in the next chapter.

506
Moltmann, Trinity and the Kingdom of God, 140.
507
Gunton, The One, the Three and the Many, 191.
508
Karl Rahner, The Trinity, 107.
509
E. S. Brightman, “Personalism,” in V Perm ed., A History of Philosophical Systems, (New York:
The Philosophical Library, 1950), 340.
178
6.2.2 Relationship between God and human as an impersonal union

Zizioulas thinks that the self as a kind of consciousness dominates Western

anthropology. As pointed out above, it is Augustine who develops the relationship

between man and God through his consciousness or even self-consciousness in

Confessions.

Zizioulas distinguishes two kinds of relationship between God and man. The

relationship between God and man can be expressed by two kinds of presence: the

presence of the personal and the presence of a-personal beings. The purpose of the

distinction is to criticize a relationship built upon our conscious reflection on the

situation: “The first indication that this presence is not a matter of psychology but of

something far more fundamental and primordial is to be found in the fact that it

does not rest upon conscious reflection but precedes it.” 510 The presence of

a-personal being is ultimately demonstrable through the intellect or sense

perception. Zizioulas asserts that if we use this kind of model to understand the

relationship between God and man, the relationship would become an a-personal

reality.

Christos Yannaras explains these two kinds of relation even more clearly.
In other words, the Church does not identify the truth of being with God as an objective and
abstract first cause of existence and life: God is not a vague supreme being, an impersonal
essence which may be approached only through the intellect or the emotions. Nor is He a
‘prime mover’… The God of whom the Church has experience is the God who reveals Himself
in history as personal existence, as distinctiveness and freedom. God is person, and He speaks
with man ‘face to face, as a man speaketh unto his friend’.511 (Exodus 33:11).
The priority of essence entails the priority of conceptual thought and therefore of the
individual intellect over experience. God is not recognized primarily as personal intervention in
history revealing the mode of divine existence, as personal experience of participation in this
mode…God becomes an object of individual understanding, which implies an abstract and

510
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 217.
511
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, 16-17.
179
 impersonal ‘supreme being’ unrelated to experience and history.512

Martin Buber also talks about two kinds of relationship: the I-Thou relationship

and the I-It relationship. The I-It relationship is constantly turning the Other into an

object. “The I of the basic word I-You is different from that of the basic word I-it.

The I of the basic word I-It appears as an ego and becomes consciousness of itself

as a subject (of experience and use). The I of the basic word I-You appears as a

person…Egos appear by setting themselves apart from other egos. Persons appear

by entering relation to other persons.”513

Zizioulas argues this issue through an example offered by Sartre: I have an

appointment in a café with a friend whose existence matters to me. But when I

arrived there I cannot discover that this person is there. For me, the absent person

precisely by not being there occupies the entire space-time context of the café. It is

only after I reflect consciously on the situation that I know who ‘is’ and who ‘is not’

there. A distinction emerges between the presence of the personal and the presence

of a-personal beings. “Those who ‘are’ and those who ‘are not’ there are not

particular beings in a personal sense: their identities are established not in

communion and freedom but by their own boundaries or through those imposed by

our own mind. Their presence is compelling for our minds and senses but not for

our freedom; they can be turned into things, they can lose their uniqueness and

finally be dispensed with.”514 In conclusion, understanding in terms of the presence

of a-personal being would turn God into a natural object but this has nothing to do

with the living God of the Bible and the worshipping Church. The personal

divine-human relationship would also be distorted into ‘object relations’.515

512
Christos Yannaras, Orthodoxy and the West, trans. Peter Chamberas and Norman Russell
(Massachusetts: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2006), 34,
513
Martin Buber, I and Thou (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1970), 111-112.
514
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 217.
515
Daniel J. Price, Karl Barth’s Anthropology in Light of Modern Thought (Michigan: William B.
Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2002), 167.
180
 A presence of a-personal beings appears to be based on the nature of things, that

is to say, to something one simply has to recognize according to its nature. For

example, according to Aquinas, the mind is conformed to God because it has God

as its object: “The divine image is noted in man according to the word conceived

from the knowledge about God and the love derived from thence.”516 In contrast, the

presence of personal beings is not established on the basis of a given ‘nature’ of the

being but of love and freedom: “in this case, ontology cannot ultimately take for

granted the being of any being; it cannot attribute the ultimacy of being to a

necessity inherent in the nature of a being; it can only attribute it to freedom and

love, which thus become ontological notions par excellence. Being in this case

owed its being to personhood and ultimately becomes identical with it.” 517

Zizioulas uses the words of W. Pannenberg to argue:

A person whose being we could survey and whose every moment we could anticipate would
thereby cease to be a person for us, and where human beings are falsely taken to be existent
beings and treated as such, then their personality is treated with contempt. This is unfortunately
possible, because human beings are in fact also existent beings. Their being as persons takes
shape in their present bodily reality, and yet it remains invisible to one whose vision—unlike
the vision of love or even that of hatred—looked only at what is existent in man.”518

Zizioulas describes the presence of God in Eastern Church and theology by two

key terms. One is kenosis (self-emptying). Kenosis and its manifestation as

self-emptying are to be understood in their positive significance, the entire giving

over of the I to the other, and the receiving of the other in his or her fullness. The

other is theosis. “Theosis, as a way of describing this unity in personhood, is,

therefore, just the opposite of a divinization in which human nature ceases to be

what it really is.”519 Theosis can be understood as the process whereby we become

516
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I. 93. 8c.
517
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 218-9.
518
W. Pannenberg, Basic Questions in Theology, vol. III, 1973, 112; see also John Zizioulas,
Communion and Otherness, 218, footnote 18.
519
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 243.
181
‘partakers in Divine nature’. “I say, ‘You are gods’” (Psalms 82:6). This phrase

from the Old Testament, quoted by our Lord Himself (John 10: 34), has deeply

marked the spiritual imagination of Orthodoxy: “In the Orthodox understanding

Christianity signifies not merely an adherence to certain dogmas, not merely an

exterior imitation of Christ through moral effort, but direct union with the living

God, the total transformation of the human person by divine grace and glory—what

the Greek Fathers termed ‘deification’ or ‘divinization’ (theosis, theopoiesis). In the

words of St. Basil the Great, man is nothing less than a creature that has received

the order to become god.”520 The idea of theosis does not involve the absorption of

the creation by the divine nature, that is, the loss of its otherness. Christ as the locus

of salvation should not be understood as bringing about a theosis in which God

would cease to be totally other than the creation. Chalcedon safeguards divine and

human otherness by insisting that the two natures in Christ remained always

‘without confusion’. Thus, Christology sanctions otherness in a fundamental

way.521

While the Lutheran confessions tend to be skeptical of the idea of theosis, the

Lutheran theologian Paul R. Hinlicky recognizes that they have in fact neglected

the significance of the Orthodox doctrine of theosis:

As a Lutheran, I want to say that the Orthodox doctrine of theosis is simply true, that
justification by faith theologically presupposes it in the same way that Paul the Apostle
reasoned by analogy from the resurrection of the dead to the justification of the
sinner…Lutherans are confused about justification today because they have neglected this
presupposition, to wit, that the point of justification is to bring us into communion with God
through Jesus Christ…In turn, the goal and content of salvation as theosis and the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit, which that opens up for Lutheranism, clarifies the desperately muddled
understanding of the relation of justification and sanctification in modern Lutheranism.522

520
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Minnesota:
Liturgical Press, 2004), 17.
521
See John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 37.
522
Paul R. Hinlicky, “Theological Anthropology: Toward Integrating Theosis and Justificaiton by
182
6.2.3 The problem of man as a moral issue rather than ontological one

According to Zizioulas, the problem of man in the Western theology is treated as

a moral issue (often with legalistic understanding as well). He expresses this point

of view by distinguishing the problems of Eastern and Western theologies:

Christ is ‘the Saviour of the world’ not because he sacrificed himself on the Cross, thereby
wiping away the sins of the world, but because ‘he is risen from the dead having trampled death
by death’. The West (Catholic and Protestant) has viewed the problem of the world as a moral
problem (transgression of a commandment and punishment) and has made of the Cross of
Christ the epicenter of faith and worship. However, Orthodoxy continues to insist upon the
Resurrection as the centre of its whole life precisely because it sees that the problem of the
523
created is not moral but ontological; it is the problem of death.

Christos Yannaras, an Orthodox theologian, also criticizes the Western juridical,

legal understanding of man’s relationship with God: “Starting from such a concrete

and existential concept of sin, the Orthodox tradition has refused to confine the

whole of man’s relationship with God within a juridical, legal framework; it has

refused to see sin as the individual transgression of a given, impersonal code of

behavior which simply produces psychological guilt.”524

Although Zizioulas often criticizes the West for treating the problem of the

human person as a moral issue rather than an ontological one, he does not always

analyze the reasons clearly. From Zizioulas’ books, I can only find one major reason:

a logical inference from basic theological understanding (the meaning will be

explained shortly). On the one hand, I will make use of the historical testimony i.e.,

the Western tendency towards moralism or legalistic undestanding of faith, to

defend Zizioulas’ opinion. On the other hand, I will criticize Zizioulas’ overly

simplistic understanding of sin in Western theology only as an ethical concept.

Firstly, there is a logical inference: there is no ontological connection between

Faith,” Journal of Ecumenical Studies 34, no.1 (Winter 1997), 63.

523
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 261.
524
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality (New York: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984),
35.
183
God and the world on the basis of nature or substance. So the relationship between

God and creation is mainly construed in terms of ethics (because person is not an

ontological category). In other words, it is difficult for those who hold a

substantialist ontology and identify being with substance to call God’s relationship

with the world ‘ontological’. Thus, in the West, the gap between God and creation

has been filled mainly not by ontology but by ethics or psychology: communion

between the Creator and creation has been conceived either in terms of obedience to

God’s commandments in Calvinism, or through some kind of ‘religion of the heart’

in Lutheranism. 525 Zizioulas thinks that this approach is influenced by Greek

philosophy and points out that it undermines Incarnation, that is, the hypostatic

union between created and uncreated being.526

Secondly, it is right for Zizioulas to assert that there is a distinction between

ontological and ethical understandings of doctrines. Sin as a moral issue is the most

basic issue for man. However, many doctrines have been explained from an ethical

perspective rather than an ontological perspective in Western theology. For

example, sin is summarized as the transgression of God’s law and

commandment,527 and death is understood as a punishment introduced to creation

and imposed upon man. Moreover, a legalistic understanding of confession means

that if one confesses his or her sins, then this particular list of sins will be

cancelled;528 the atonement means that the Lord Jesus Christ suffered the penalty of

525
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 20.
526
Ibid., 29.
527
Cf. David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God the Father, God the Son (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books,
2003), 185.
528
Aristotle Papanikolaou and Elizabeth H. Prodromou eds., Thinking through Faith (New York: St
Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2008), 219. According to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia,
confessionalization is a recent concept employed by reformation historians to describe the parallel
processes of ‘confession-building’ taking place in Europe between the peace of Augsburg (1555)
and the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1649). During this time prior to the Thirty Year’s War, there was a
nominal peace between the Protestant and Catholic confessions as both competed to establish their
faith more firmly with the population of their respective areas. This confession-building occurred
through ‘social-disciplining,’ as there was a stricter enforcement by the churches of their particular
184
the broken law vicariously, as the substitute for His people.529 In this way, salvation

becomes totally objective because this vacarious death can happen regardless of

people’s subjective response to Christ. However, the model of penal substitution is

inadequate to the images of rebirth, regeneration, creation of new man, etc. which

also constitute essential parts of atonement, and these all lie on the level of ontology,

that is, the transformation of human persons and their relationship with God and

other persons. It means that a legalistic or moralistic understanding of sin and

salvation is deficient because it lacks an ontological perspective.

In fact, although we cannot say that this is universally the case, it is arguable that

Roman Catholic moral theology and Protestant Christian ethics by and large have

manifested a tendency towards moralism. Moral theology is the name given by the

Roman Catholic tradition to the theological discipline that deals with Christian life

and action.530 An academic and systematic approach to moral theology began in the

teaching of Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas deals with the human response to God’ gift

and the moral life in the second Part of the Summa theologiae. But it is Alan of Lille

(d. 1202) rather than Aquinas who separates out a discipline called ‘moral

theology’. Later academics developed moral theology through commentaries on the

second part of the Summa, especially in the sixteenth-century.531

We can take moral theology in the United States as an example. Moral theology

was identified with what were called ‘manuals of moral theology’. The manuals of

moral theology owe their origin to the Council of Trent in sixteenth-century. The

rules for all aspects of life in both Protestant and Catholic areas. This had the consequence of
creating distinctive confessional identities. For example, the TULIP of Calvinism: Total Depravity;
Unconditional election; Limited or Definite Atonement; Irresistible of Grace; Perseverance of the
Saints.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confessionalization
529
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God the Father, God the Son, 317.
530
Charles E. Curran, Catholic Moral Theology in the United States (Washington: Georgetown
University Press, 2008), xi.
531
Ibid., 1.
185
Council understood the sacrament of penance primarily in juridical terms. The

priest acts as a judge to determine whether absolution is to be given or denied.532 In

the legal model of the manuals, conscience is the subjective norm of morality,

whereas law constitutes the objective norm of morality.533 The approach of moral

theology in the United States in the period before the 1960s was based on natural

law. However, it can be seen that there are increasing dissatisfactions with the

model of natural law even within the Catholic tradition. For example, the

post-Vatican II period called for a more scriptural and theological approach to

moral theology. It brought startling changes. Moral theology was no longer tied to

one methodology. A pluralism of different methodological approaches now existed

in this discipline. John Paul II emphasizes that truth is the ultimate foundation for

moral living and moral theology. In this period, some moral theology even turns to

give more emphasis on the person himself rather than the legalistic assessment of

his act. So the understanding of sin has also been changed, and some argue that this

signifies a return to a more Biblical understanding. After all, the concept of sin in

Genesis is more than just an act of disobedience because sin also involves a

breaking of the covenantal relationship with God.534

Traditional Protestant theological ethics also manifests the same tendency

towards moralism. As Stanley Hauerwas writes:

Protestant theological ethics has tended to shape its conception of the moral life around the
metaphor of command. The Christian’s obligation, in the light of this metaphor, is obedience to
the law and performance of the will of God. The object of the moral life is not to grow but to be
repeatedly ready to obey each new command…it has generally been assumed that God’s

532
Ibid., 2. In the same book, we can find some examples: Stephen Badin, an early missionary in
Kentucky, spent most of his days in these pastoral visits hearing confessions. (p.11) In the seminary,
the emphasis was on moral theology. Diocesan seminarians had more instruction in moral theology
than they had in dogmatic theology. (p.12) Aloysius Sabetti (1839-98), author of a manual of moral
theology, sees morality primarily in terms of obedience to law. (p.19)
533
Ibid., 181.
534
Ibid., 184.
186
 relation to man is fundamentally to be understood in terms of command and obedience.535

This kind of obedience is explained mainly ethically without reference to the

metaphysical ground. For example, justification by faith may suggest that our

righteousness is built only upon the legal transaction between God and Christ:

Christ’s death has paid for us our debt to God, and hence we are deemed righteous

and justified. However, Matti Kärkkäinen reflects: “Yet in order for the

righteousness to be genuine, a new obedience is called for, not just a ‘legal fiction.’

But it is only through ‘the example of Christ and by his gracious gift of the Holy

Spirit [that] this achievement of righteousness has become a new possibility for

believers.”536

Greg Ogden criticizes that American Christian life after World War II had been

reduced to the ethical level: “A generation ago the Christian life was conceived of

as a life of ethical respectability expressed through the support of the institution of

the Church…Going to the church was as American as apple pie, since the church

provided the moral glue for the community and national spirit.”537 Will Herberg

describes that in the fifties (after World War II), to be an American meant to identify

with one of these religious traditions. In this period, going to church did not

generally mean that people are having a vital, living encounter with Christ. Even

church people may only have a kind of institutional faith. This kind of Christianity

cannot manifest the genuine faith in Christ—repenting, receiving forgiveness, and

living a new life under Christ’s lordship.538

535
Stanley Hauerwas, Character and the Christian Life: A Study in Theological Ethics (San Antonio:
Trinity University Press, 1984). 2.
536
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Minnesota:
Liturgical Press, 2004), 130. The citing in it belongs to Hinlicky, “Theological Anthropology,” 58.
537
Greg Ogden, The New Reformation (Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1990), 17.
538
Ibid., 18.
187
6.3 Analysis of Zizioulas’ criticisms
We can analyze Zizioulas’ criticisms of Augustine with regard to three aspects,

and evaluate Zizioulas’ criticism of the problem of the world merely as a moral

problem in Catholic and Protestant traditions.

Firstly, since I agree that the concept of person is a relational concept,

Augustine’s definition of person is indeed too individualistic. It embodies a

distinction: “In the Greek idea, ecstasies, the toward-another, is primary; in the

Latin, self-possession is primary.”539

Secondly, however, Zizioulas’ critique may be a bit excessive when he regards

Augustine’ concept of consciousness only as I-it relationship: “Consciousness is

not only a manifestation of the priority of the I; it is always at the same time

consciousness of something, that is, a process of turning the Other into an

object.”540 We have to point out that in our cognition, turning the Other into an

object to some degree is almost inescapable, and this in itself cannot be regarded as

evil. The crucial matter is whether we ONLY treat the Other as an object. If so, this

would turn into an undesirable kind of I-it relationship. Even Buber himself does

not deny the value of I-it relationship as such.

Moreover, when Zizioulas criticizes Augustine’s influence on the Western

concept of person, he does not distinguish Augustine’s concept of consciousness

from those of other philosophers, such as Descartes. In fact, Augustine’ concept of

‘consciousness’ does not only involve a psychological consciousness always

turning towards itself. Instead, his consciousness is oriented toward God, a

corollary from the understanding of the human person as the image of God. In his

The Trinity, Augustine presents more than twenty triadic psychological analogies

539
Catherine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 287.
540
Greg Ogden, The New Reformation, 48.
188
for exploration. The purpose of exploring these analogies is to love God: “Now this

Trinity of the mind is God’s image, not because the mind remembers, understands

and loves itself; but because it has the power also to remember, understand and

love its Maker”541 In his Confessions, the whole person stands in relation to God as

a rational creature. Augustine’s Trinitarian theology inspires his vision of humans

in a contemplative union with their creator. Augustine does put some emphasis on a

personal relationship between the human person and God: “You stood me face to

face with myself,” he prays, “so that I might see how foul I was.” 542 All the

reflection of Augustine is treated under the category of ‘illumination’. For

Augustine’s illumination theory of cognition, illumination witnesses a relationship

between God and the human person:

The mind needs to be enlightened by light from outside itself, so that it can participate in truth,
because it is not itself the nature of truth. You will light my lamp, Lord (Confessions, IV. Xv 25);
None other than you is teacher of the truth, wherever and from whatever source it is manifest (V.
vi.10);
You hear nothing true from me which you have not first told me (X. ii. 2).
Truth, when did you ever fail to walk with me, teaching me what to avoid and what to
seek…Without you I could discern none of these things (X. xl.65)

All in all, to know the truth, the mind needs to be enlightened ‘from outside

itself’. This is Augustine’s famous ‘illumination theory’. This theory remained

popular among Christian philosophers for most of the Middle Ages. For example,

thirteenth-century Franciscans, led by figures such as Bonaventure (c.1217–1274)

and Matthew of Aquasparta (c.1237–1302), gave the theory a detailed and

systematic defense. Nevertheless, this line of thinking came to look increasingly

old-fashioned as the thirteenth century progressed. The growing influence of

Aristotle’s theory of cognition, as developed in particular by the Dominican friars

541
Augustine, The Trinity, XIV, 15.
542
Augustine, Confessions VIII, 7.16; see also Joseph Torchia, Exploring Personhood: An
Introduction to the Philosophy of Human Nature (New York: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.,
2008) 115.
189
Albert the Great (c.1200–1280) and his student, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225–1274),

led to a belief that human beings might be able to achieve certain knowledge

despite the changeability of mind and matter. It was the Franciscan John Duns

Scotus, more than anyone else, who put an end to the theory of divine illumination.

It is obvious that later philosophers understand illumination theory only as a

means of cognition. Therefore, the discussion focuses on whether the human mind

is capable of achieving certain knowledge. This development is influenced by the

Greek view of truth and it ignores the ontological level of the communion between

God and the human person. It falls into a complete abstractionism. I will criticize

this in chapter seven. Here my emphasis is that Augustine’s illumination theory is

not only a theory of cognition. At the same time, there is an ontological ground in

this kind of cognition: because God is a living God entering into relationship with

human persons, a human person can communicate with Him. In other words,

Augustine’s Confessions also contains elements of the ‘I-Thou relationship’. There

is indeed a use of introspection, but this is based on illumination, which is further

dependent on a personal relation with God.

To sum up, the so called individualist consciousness in Augustine is also the

reflection of his meeting with a living God. Though Augustine does not define

person as a relational concept, in his whole faith, we can find an ontological ground

for this kind of relational understanding. It simply means that there is a gap between

Augustine’s definition of the term of ‘person’ and the full content of his faith

experience. As we have stated in part one, in The Trinity Augustine explores the

possibility of understanding person by way of relationship, but he ultimately turns

again to link person with substance: “But it is ridiculous that substance should be

predicated by way of relationship; every single thing that is…subsists with

190
reference to itself”.543

So Augustine’s shortcomings may be attributed to the limitations of the

available terminology and concepts at that time rather than to his relationship with

God. Philip A. Rolnick comments: “Standing near the beginning of the great Greek

distinction between ousia and hypostasis, he [Augustine] is understandably unclear

about how persona, which is being used to translate hypostasis, is not then

equivalent to substantia.” 544 Simply looking at the logical consequences of

Augustine’s terms, Zizioulas concludes that this kind of relationship between God

and man is impersonal. In fact, in both Augustine’s theology and that of Aquinas,

there are personal relationship between God and man. In other words, this is a flaw

of their theory or there may be internal inconsistencies in their theological systems.

These may still have led to undesirable consequences, especially when these

concepts have been increasingly divorced from their original theological contexts

as the Western society becomes more and more secular. However, we can have a

more sympathetic understanding of Augustine’s theology, and do not need to

simply identify Augustine’s concept of consciousness with that of Descartes and

other philosophers.

Thirdly, despite the validity of Zizioulas’ criticisms in some aspects, Zizioulas

may have exaggerated his point when he alleges that the whole Catholic and

Protestant traditions have viewed the problem of the world merely as a moral

problem. For example, the views of ‘Original Sin’ and ‘total depravity’ are not

merely ethical categories. It can be proved by the theological disputes between

Augustine and Pelagius. There are two elements in Augustine’s doctrine of sin: the

one metaphysical or philosophical and the other moral or religious. The

543
Augustine, The Trinity VII. 9, 227.
544
Philip A. Rolnick, Person, Grace, and God (Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing
Company, 2007), 32.
191
metaphysical element in Augustine’s doctrine of sin arose from his controversy

with the Manicheans. Manes teaches that sin was a substance. Augustine defines

evil as the privation of good (which is identified with being), and metaphysically it

belongs not to the category of being, but to the category of nothingness. Thus,

although sin in some sense exists, we need not say that God is sin’s author (even if

God is the Creator of everything). The above controversy shows that theologians

have considered the ontological status of sin long time ago.

In the early part of the fifth Century, Augustine formulates the doctrine of total

depravity when he protests against Pelagius’ views. Augustine strongly held that

fallen man was utterly incapable of any good works and was thus completely

dependent on the divine grace for salvation. The reason was that Augustine

believed that Original Sin was passed down the generations through the very act of

sexual intercourse. Original Sin made it impossible for humans to do good on their

own account, because it degraded both their moral capacity and their willpower.

Only through God’s grace could humans achieve salvation. Pelagius (probably A.

D. 354-after 418), a British monk and contemporary of Augustine, reacted against

Augustine’s views on grace and determinism. Because he taught that man retained

natural goodness and emphasized free will, he denied original sin and affirmed

unhindered human free will. Again, these debates show that the understanding of

sin in traditional Western theology is inseparable from the ontological

understanding of the human person.

On the other hand, Zizioulas understands the concept of sin merely from a moral

perspective which I will criticize in chapter seven.

To sum up, although Zizioulas’ critique of the Western traditions is to some

extent valid, his understanding of sin in Western theology seems to be inadequate.

He has also neglected the fact that many Western theologians have in fact realized
192
the problems of moralism and legalism, and have tried to correct it. For Catholic

theology, as we have stated, the tendency of theology is changing in the

post-Vatican II period. As for reformed theology, recently Richard Gaffin gives an

inaugural lecture demonstrating the relationship between biblical and systematic

theology through the doctrine of union with Christ. It presents a challenge to the old

line of moralistic theology. It is the consequence of a debate in Protestant theology:

The recent blog exchanges concerning the relationship between justification and sanctification,
along with the role of union with Christ in each, is part of a larger ongoing discussion of which
some may be unaware. Certainly this is not true for those writing the posts, but the general
reader may not have noticed what has developed into a debate particularly over the past five
545
years.

The response from Reformed circles defending the doctrine of justification has,

generally speaking, followed two lines. One response has continued to place greater

emphasis on the priority of justification for the entire structure of salvation and

makes this legal dimension the basis for all other benefits of redemption. However,

the other response does assert the central role of union with Christ as the

overarching principle in redemption. This has certainly transformed the traditional

legalistic understanding into a more ontological understanding. 546

In fact, Mannermaa School claims that Luther’s view of justification differs from

the official Lutheran doctrine as expounded in the confessional books of the

Evangelical Lutheran Churches. 547 Forensic justification is typical of Lutheran

theology.548 However, for Luther himself, justification is not a forensic term but

545
Richard Gaffin, “Biblical Theology and the Westminster Standards.” WTJ65 (2003): 165-79. cf.
http://historiasalutis.com/2011/08/20/a-guide-to-recent-discussions-on-justification-and-sanctificat
ion
546
It comes from a site. Many books and articles which discuss ‘union with Christ’ have been
introduced on this website in recent years:
http://historiasalutis.com/2011/08/20/a-guide-to-recent-discussions-on-justification-and-sanctificat
ion
547
In Europe, since the 1970s a ‘new quest for Luther’s theology’ has emerged mainly at the
University of Helsinke, initiated by Tuomo mannermaa and his students. See Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen,
One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2004), 37.
548
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Minnesota:
193
rather a matter of Christ abiding in the heart of the believer in a ‘real-ontic’ way;

theosis (union with Christ) is one of the images Luther used to describe salvation.549

Since this school emphasizes Christ’s person, we can say that the emphasis on the

personal truth is already present in Luther’s theology. It is unfortunate that his

followers (the Lutherans) have largely forgotten this genuinely “Lutheran” truth.

When the Protestant tradition maintains the indispensability of the ‘union with

Christ’ now, it means that they emphasize an ontological dimension in the Christian

doctrines. It may become a bridge for the dialogues between Eastern theology and

Western theology. However, although Zizioulas may have exaggerated a bit in his

zealous critique of the Western traditions, he has still provided challenging

questions for the West: whether they have really sufficiently changed their largely

substantialist approach to anthropology to avoid all its problematic implications or

consequences, and whether they have developed an adequate way to present an

ontological analysis of theological anthropology. In all these aspects, Zizioulas’

critique is still relevant.

Liturgical Press, 2004), 52.

549
See Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification (Minnesota:
Liturgical Press, 2004), 38. These findings have been rapidly introduced into ecumenical
conversations, first between the Russian Orthodox Church and the Finnish Lutheran Church, and
then into the international Orthodox-Lutheran dialogues.
194
 Chapter Seven

Contributions and criticism of Zizioulas’

ontology of personhood
Zizioulas’ personal ontology provides a powerful criticism of substantialist

views of God and the human person. However, there are some flaws in Zizioulas’

personal ontology. For example, the most important concepts of ‘sin’, ‘justice’ or

‘righteousness’ are overlooked by Zizioulas. For Zizioulas, ‘sin’ and ‘justice’ are

ethical categories. Therefore, ‘sin’ has not been regarded as an important concept

for the understanding of salvation.

Many theologians agree with the ontology of personhood without criticisms, and

others criticize Zizioulas but provide no further analysis. In this chapter, I will

analyze both the contribution and the flaw of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood.

The contribution at least includes three points: reconstructing a theological

ontology; building up a personal knowledge for Christianity; the view that salvation

first concerns hypostasis’ transformation rather than human nature. My criticism

mainly involves that Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood ignores the concepts of sin

and justice. His ontology of personhood also does not have sufficient social

concern.

7.1 Contributions of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood

Zizioulas reinterprets the ontological concept of person or hypostasis in terms of

the Cappadocian Trinitarian theology. It replaces the meaning of person in the

modern individualist notions. Thus he reconstructs a theological ontology: the

ontology of personhood in contrast with traditional Latin substantialism. It will

bring theological reflection to the whole Western substantialist system

195
7.1.1 Reconstructing a theological ontology as a new approach to theological

study

Since Thomas Aquinas pursues theology as an academic discipline, his outlooks

continue to influence many branches of the church today. In fact, Western

traditional theologians try to imitate the methods of natural or physical science to

study theology. They tend to leave application in the hands of ministers and pastors.

It produces a result: the detachment of traditional academically-oriented theology

from Christian life. In Western traditional theology, systematic theology covers a

vast array of more or less theoretical or abstract subjects. “Christian living or

personal spirituality” is attributed to the division of practical theology.

Through introducing the Trinitarian theology of the Cappadocian, Zizioulas

develops a theological ontology: the ontology of personhood, i.e., the priority of

person over substance. Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood provides a different

approach for our study of Christian doctrine. The concept of personhood is an

ontological category which can run through theoretical theology and practical

theology. There is a deep reflection on Christian doctrines in Zizioulas’ theology.

According to “God is not alone and God exists in communion”,550 and the being of

God as the personhood of Father, Zizioulas reframes his Trinitarian theology which

is different from Western substantialist view of God. Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood provides an ontological foundation for the human person’s identity.

Such a concept of personhood is based on the early Christian concept of divine

persons understood as relational entities. It is a new concept of personhood which is

different from the understanding of person as a center of consciousness. It means

that personal identity can not be found through nature because nature always points

to the general; it is ‘personhood’ that safeguards uniqueness and absolute

550
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 166.
196
particularity. Zizioulas insists the ontology of personhood and gives Christian

doctrine a personal interpretation. From this starting point, it will change our

epistemology,551 soteriology, spirituality552 and so forth. I will provide a simple

analysis.

7.1.2 A personal knowledge or epistemology for Christianity

Zizioulas’ personal ontology is mainly conceived as a corrective for

substantialism. He believes that truth is not identified with the objective or

intellectual system of theology: “Christian theology is the expression of the

experience of the living Church, rather than of intellectual perception or the logical

arrangement of propositions.”553 Therefore, through the ontology of personhood,

the understanding of Christianity signifies not merely an adherence to certain

dogmas, not merely on exterior imitation of Christ’s moral effort, but direct union

with the living God, the total transformation of the human person by divine grace

and glory—what the Greek Fathers terms ‘deification’ or ‘divinization’ (theosis) in

the words of St. Basil.554

He regards the emphasis on ‘propositional truth’ as the consequence of

substantialism. His efforts are to show that true knowledge is not a kind of

knowledge of the essence or the nature of things, but of how they are connected

within the communion-event.555 When Zizioulas criticizes substantialism, he is also

551
The substantialist approach brings some objective knowledge of God and man. However, only a
personal approach helps us set up a personal knowledge. Zizioulas said that it would be wrong to
present dogmas as unconnected with the essence of our life. “Theology does not have the obligation
only to describe dogmas, presenting the form they took in the past. It also has a duty to interpret
them, so that it becomes apparent how and why our existence depends on them.” See John Zizioulas,
The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World Today, ed., Fr. Gregory
Edwards (California: Sebastian Press, 2010), 18.
552
The tendency to approach spirituality is not through the intellect or knowledge but through the
personal union.
553
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 3.
554
Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification, 46.
555
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 106.
197
introducing a new kind of epistemology. Since Zizioulas’ emphasis is on ontology,

he does not provide a systematic presentation of this new epistemoloy. So I want to

provide some further analysis here because it is an important issue in theology.

The Greeks saw abstraction as an indispensable and valuable tool in the search for

knowledge. Thales concluded that water was the essence of everything. Therefore,

water is the highest abstraction. Following Thales, many Greek philosophers

reached their worldview by abstract reasoning. Therefore, abstraction was the way

to knowledge, even knowledge of concrete realities. Apart from the ‘specifics’,

various things have something in common in their being. However, when we think

about ‘being-in general’, the features of individual things have been ignored.

Moreover, the rationalists’ chief concern is certainty. They believe that only if

knowledge is not derived from sense-experience, it will not be distorted by human

subjectivity. The rationalist’s goal is to establish a body of knowledge that is totally

free from the uncertainties of sense-experience and subjectivity. Personal

knowledge has no place in this kind of system.

Some theologians are not secular rationalists, and their starting point is the

revelation of the Bible. However, they have the same view of truth as that of the

secular rationalists: truth is identified with objective knowledge. So they build up a

system of ‘propositional revelation’ and ‘revealed doctrine’. The knowledge of God

is regarded as ‘intellectual knowledge’. Knowledge in the ‘intellectual’ sense is

often defined as ‘justified, true belief.’ For these theologians, the knowledge of God

also involves justified true belief which is grounded in God’s clear revelation of

himself in nature, man, and the Bible. This kind of knowledge always involves a

subject who knows an object according to some standard or criterion. It seems that

the rationalism of non-Christian thinking has also influenced the Christian thought.

Similarly, this kind of religious epistemology does not leave room for personal
198
knowledge.

For example, John frame, a reformed theologian, points out the limitations when

the abstractionist method is applied to theology. John Frame writes: “Theology, too,

chafed under the constraints of abstractionist methodology. After all, Scripture

means above all to tell us something very specific, not general truths about

being-as-such but about the Lord, the living God, about specific historical events in

which God saved us from sin, about our own character, decisions, actions, attitudes,

and so forth.” 556 John Frame mentions three perspectives of knowledge: the

normative perspective, the situational perspective and the existential perspective:

“Under the normative perspective we asked, is this belief consistent with the laws of

thought? Under the situational perspective the question was, is my belief in accord

with objective reality? Now we come to the existential perspective in which we ask,

can I live with this belief?”557 Frame also points out the intimate connection of

epistemology with ethics:

I suggested earlier that epistemology could be understood as a subdivision of ethics. Knowing
is knowing what we ought to believe. To justify our knowledge is to establish the presence of
that ethical ‘ought’. And once that ‘ought’ is established, we must apply it to all the rest of life
(the applications are the meaning!). All of our decisions should be reconciled with what we
know to be true. We must live in truth, walk in truth, do the truth. Knowledge, therefore, is an
ethically responsible orientation of the person to his experience. To know is to respond rightly
to the evidence and norms available to us.558

It looks as if Frame’s understanding of epistemology already departs from the

intellectualist tradition quite a lot. However, the core of knowledge, for him, is still

‘belief’ (“Knowing is knowing what we ought to believe.”) Moreover, although his

three perspectives include an existential perspective, they still do not ascend to the

ontological level. In short, his framework is still under the spell of ‘substantialism’.

556
John M. Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God (New Jersey: Presbyterian and Reformed
Publishing, 1987), 175.
557
Ibid., 150.
558
Ibid., 149.
199
 Abstractionism has been suspected by the Greek Sophists and skeptics, medieval

nominalists and modern empiricists. Søren Kierkegaard opposed Hegel’s system

because it was unable to account for human individuality. ‘Phenomenologist’ and

‘existentialist’ philosophers sought to describe concrete knowledge in

Kierkegaard’s way. Anti-abstractionism was in fact quite pervasive in modern

philosophy. It distinguished between the ‘abstract’, ‘objective’ knowledge

discovered by the sciences and the concrete knowledge of nontheoretical

experience.

For example, John Macmurray distinguishes philosophical knowledge from

scientific knowledge. He writes: “Two types of knowledge we possess, and may seek

systematically to extend, of the world of persons. The one is our knowledge of

persons as persons: the other our knowledge of persons as objects. The first

depends upon and expresses a personal attitude to the other person, the second an

impersonal attitude.” 559 Thus Macmurray distinguishes two kinds of concept

involving human being. Firstly, the concept ‘man’ is a general class concept. It is

constituted by the impersonal attitude of the observer. It is related to an objective or

scientific knowledge of man which we can obtain without entering into personal

relations. Secondly, the concept of ‘the personal’ is not about an isolated individual;

neither is it an exclusive concept. We obtain this kind of knowledge in personal

relations. However, for Macmurray, these two types of knowledge are not mutually

exclusive: “A knowledge of the personal must include an objective knowledge of

man, and the work of the anthropological sciences is justified and is, in principle,

correct, though of course it may be mistaken in detail.”560 Both refer to the same

human beings. If the two types of knowledge were apparently in contradiction with

559
John Macmurray, Persons in Relation (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1970), 37.
560
Ibid., 38.
200
one another, the reason must be that we regard the scientific account as a complete

and absolute account. So it entails the rejection of the personal conception.

Unfortunately, we will then commit an error. “The error lies in our failure to

understand the special character of scientific knowledge, and so not in our science

but in our philosophy of the personal. It is, in fact, the result of a false valuation of

the objective attitude, which makes it normative for all possible attitudes.”561

Macmurray promotes a personalist philosophy as a corrective to philosophical

objectivism. Similarly, we find that the same error has happened in our theology

when we regard the objective knowledge of God and man as a complete and

absolute account of reality. In fact, it is doubtful whether there has been a truly

ontological and personal conception in Western traditional theology. In most of the

time, objective knowledge was regarded as a complete and absolute account, and

not as a true account of the aspect of realities. This kind of framework will

depersonalize both God and man.

Since the change of philosophical climate will influence theology,

anti-abstractionism also becomes more prominent in contemporary theology. For

example, liberal theologians dislike ‘propositional revelation’ and ‘revealed

doctrine’, which are formulated in terms of abstractionism.562 God, for them, could

not be known by way of essence. “Thus we have had an era of ‘theologies of’ this

and that: theologies of hope, liberation, personal encounter, Word of God, crisis,

reconciliation, covenant, feeling, history, kingdom of God, existential

self-understanding, and so forth.” 563 In the ‘introduction’, I talk about ‘the

necessity of reconstructing a theological ontology’, because a change in ontology

561
Ibid., 38.
562
For example, Schleiermacher, the father of modern liberal theology, argued that no doctrine can
be accepted “unless it is connected with [Christ’s] redeeming causality and can be traced to the
original impression made by his existence.” F. Schleiermacher, The Christian Faith (Edinburgh: T.
and T. Clark, 1928), 125.
563
John Frame, The Doctrine of the Knowledge of God, 177.
201
will bring about the change in epistemology. There is now a greater tendency for

theologians to put emphasis on a personal God instead of on a traditional

conception of substance in the 20th century. For example, Carl Henry uses one
564
chapter to describe ‘Divine Revelation as Personal’. For McGrath,

evangelicalism needs to focus on the person and work of Jesus Christ, and to affirm

that all must be based upon Christ, not simply as a source of ideas, but as the

foundation of every aspect of the Christian life: “The evangelical passion for truth

is expressed partly in its focus on the person of Christ, in that Jesus Christ is the

truth.”565

Among all anti-abstractionists, Zizioulas is an important figure. However, his

emphasis is not on epistemology but on ontology. He reconstructs a new theological

ontology which is quite distinct from the Western substantialist ontology. As Alan

Torrance comments:
Here we see the extent to which Zizioulas breaks with theological approaches operating from a
‘revelation model’ and consistently redefines the theological enterprise from the perspective of
a ‘communion model’—a model which sustains (and presupposes) a commonality of
personhood between God and humanity. In doing this Zizioulas does a great deal to take
theology beyond the obsession with epistemological concerns which has characterized so much
theology since the Enlightenment—even, as Colin Gunton suggests, Karl Barth’s theology.566

The ‘communion model’ will transform our knowledge of God from an objective

systematic theology to a kind of personal knowledge. For Zizioulas, his personal

theology is based on the Eucharist experience. Zizioulas puts forward an

ontological scheme which provides support for the concrete individual and

564
Carl F. H. Henry, God, Revelation and Authority, Vol. II (Texas: Word Book, Publisher, 1976),
151.
565
Alister E. McGrath, A Passion for Truth: The Intellectual Coherence of Evangelicalism (England:
Apollos, 1996), 27.
566
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation, 299-300. Gunton writes: “Karl Barth saw himself primarily as standing before the
God made known-revealed –in Scripture, and as is well known, his preoccupation with revelation
gave to his theology a strongly epistemic drive, which at the same time showed him to be working in
some way in the context of, although also against, the Enlightenment.” The Promise of Trinitarain
Theology, 4-5.
202
integrates knowledge into life according to this kind of ontological theology. He

realizes that knowledge and communion are identical. In other words, knowledge

and life are identical. 567 LaCugna claims: “indeed, authentically theological

knowledge is that which comes about as a result of union with God.” 568 Alan

Torrance writes: “Supremely important is [Zizioulas’] establishing the primacy of

communion over revelation and affirmation of the integral relationship between

truth and communion.”569 An ontology of personhood means that no truth is outside

personal life.

Based on the ontology of personhood, a personal knowledge can be attained

through a personal relationship and religious experience. In fact, personal

knowledge is the primary kind of knowledge we find in the Bible. Thus we can

interpret all concepts of theology from the perspective of relationship though

Zizioulas does not exactly say this. For example, sin can be explained through a

more relational understanding than an ethical one alone. When we introduce sin

from this starting point, it will help us avoid the tendency towards legalism.

At the same time, the personal attitude helps us enter into personal relation with

God and others and treat them as persons. Thus, the relationship between God and

man is not merely an ethical relationship, but an ontological as well as existential

relationship. It also shows that faith transcends ethics.570 Under the objectivist idea

567
John Zizioulas, Being as Communion, 81.
568
Catherine LaCugna, God for Us, 348.
569
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation, 304.
570
Kierkegaard provides a famous argument for why faith transcends ethic in his book Fear and
Trembling. There is a paradox between the ethical expression and the religious expression when
Kierkegaard describes the story of Abraham, who was told by God to ascend Mount Moriah to
sacrifice his only son, Isaac, (Genesis 22: 2-14) for it is impossible that Abraham don’t love his only
son. Here Kierkegaard points out a very important problem about the relationship between faith and
ethics. Kierkkegarrd raises three problems. The first deals with the possibility of a teleological
suspension of the ethical. The second questions the existence of an absolute duty to God. The third
asks whether it is ethically defensible for Abraham to conceal his undertaking from Sarah, from
Eliezer, and from Isaac. In the first problem, Kierkegaard defines ethics as the universal, as applying
to all at all times. The ethical is the telos, of everything outside itself and there is no telos beyond the
203
of truth, it is difficult for Christians to distinguish the ethical from the ontological

relationship between God and man, because Christians only emphasize the

obedience to the Word of God. However, according to the ontology of personhood,

the goal of knowledge is to establish a personal relationship between God and man

which is an ontological expression instead of a kind of belief.

It seems that Zizioulas’ ontological theology is similar to evangelicalism because

both emphasize the personal relationship between God and man. However,

Zizioulas’ starting point is the three persons of the Triune God. He does not focus

only on the person of Christ like evangelicalism often does. Thus there is more

room for Zizioulas’ Trinitarain theology to apply to the community than

evangelicalism has.

One issue is important: whether Zizioulas abondons the objective Word of the

Bible when he claims that truth is personal or subjetive. Zizioulas does not exclude

the objectivity of the Bible. He distinguishes two terms: Doctrine (Dogma) and

kerygma. In terms of different objects, Zizioulas points out the dogma or the

teaching of the Church is related to worship, but proclamation (kerygma) is the

preaching to all the world. “While kerygma exists in order that it can proclaim the

truth to those outside the Church, which does of course involve arguing with them

about what is true…Dogma is the doctrine that, through its councils, the Church

confesses as the truth that brings salvation for every human being. This truth brings

ethical. Concerning the relationship between ethics and religion, there are two possibilities: either
the ethical is harmonious with the eternal salvation or the ethical clashes with the religious. In most
cases there is no conflict between the two aspects, but not always. When somebody faces a collision
between these two ultimates, the question emerges: which one is higher? That is to say, which is the
ultimate end deserving to be given precedence? Kierkegaard defines faith as the single individual
standing in an absolute relation to the absolute: “Faith is precisely the paradox that the single
individual is higher than the universal, is justified before it, not as inferior to it but as superior... that
it is the single individual who, after being subordinate as the single individual to the universal, now
by means of the universal becomes the single individual who as the single individual is superior, that
the single individual as the single individual stands in an absolute relation to the absolute.” Søren
Kierkegaard, Fear and Trembling, trans. and eds. Howard V. Honand and Edna H Hong (New Jersey:
Princeton University Press, 1983), 54.
204
us into particular relationships with one another, and it brings the Church into a

particular relationship with God and with the world.”571 Thus there are two kinds

of knowledge according to Zizioulas, but truth is not constituted by objective

propositions, but by personal relationship: “But truth is not a matter of objective,

logical proposals, but of personal relationships between God, man and the world.

We do not come to know truth simply through intellectual assent to the proposition

that God is triune. It is only when we are drawn into the life of God, which is triune,

and through it receives our entire existence and identity, that we have real

knowledge.”572

7.1.3 Salvation concerning foremostly hypostasis rather than human nature

The salvation involves a transformation of the mode of existence from biological

to ecclesial hypostasis which is described in chapter four. The change is indeed

ontological and existential, not in the sense that one kind of being becomes another

kind of being (fruit becomes bread), but in the sense that the new person involves a

new being-in-relation. It is different from the traditional Western understanding of

salvation. Generally speaking, the Western understanding of new life involves the

change of the human nature: a transformation from evil to good.

The substantialists approach man from the viewpoint of his ‘substance’ and try to

understand him by drawing the limits between divine and human nature.573 When

the perfect human nature rather than the personhood is the ultimate ground for the

being of humans, naturally people understand the essence of salvation as a

transformation of human nature. Take Calvin as an example. For Calvin, Adam is a

rational being who represents the Imago Dei before the Fall. He possesses a perfect

571
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 6.
572
Ibid., 7-8.
573
Calvin, Comm. on Rom. 7:14.
205
nature which is the end of man. Eventually, man will receive an entirely new nature

in faith. Calvin writes:

According to Paul, spiritual regeneration is nothing else than the restoration of the same
image (Col. 3:10; and Eph. 4: 23). That he made this image consist in ‘righteousness and
true holiness’ is by the figure synechdoche, for though this is the chief part, it is not the
whole of God’s image. Therefore by this word the perfection of our whole nature is
designated, as it appeared when Adam was endued with a right judgment, had affection in
harmony with reason, had all his senses sound and well-regulated, and truly excelled in
574
everything good.

For Calvin, the purpose of Christ is to help us to be men who recover perfect

human nature as Adam does before the Fall. As T. F. Torrance writes: “In some

sense, Calvin thought of Christ as bearing the image of God in virtue of His human

nature in addition to the fact that He was the image of God in the sense of the

eternal Word.”575 Christian new life is identified with a perfect human nature. It

means that the change is from a corrupt human nature to a perfect human nature.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones writes: “Now we are concerned more about the power and the

pollution of sin—‘renews his whole nature in the image of God and enables him to

perform good works’.”576

If we see human nature as a ground of human existence, there is a possibility to

divinize human nature through the perfect human nature of Jesus. For example: as

Martyn Lloyd-Jones criticizes some substantialists:

Some people seem to think that once men and women are born again, the activity of God in
them ceases. Because God has given them a new nature, they say, they have nothing to do now
but to exercise the new nature, and they do that by reading the Scriptures and understanding
and applying them. In connection with their sanctification they do everything themselves.577

For some substantialists, a puzzling question arises: if the nature of man has been

changed, why does man continue to sin after regeneration? Therefore, it is difficult

574
Calvin, Comm. on Gen. 1. 26.
575
T. F. Torrance, Calvin’s Doctrine of Man (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, Publishers, 1977), 60.
576
David Martyn Lloyd-Jones, God the Holy Spirit (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2003), 195.
577
Ibid., 207.
206
for us to accept the sinful reality of ourselves and others. If we expect an entirely

new nature after believing, we will be very disappointed because we still often find

ourselves sinning. Since it is difficult for us to accept this conflict, we may become

hypocrites who want to cover up our sin.

In contrast with above approach, if we express the meaning of salvation in terms

of hypostasis or personhood, it means that we regard the living relationship with

God in Christ through the Holy Spirit as an ontological and existential issue. The

transformation of human nature depends on the transformation of hypostasis or

person: “No transformation in nature is possible outside the sphere of its personal

realization, since nature only exists in persons, and once it becomes existentially

independent of the life of personal distinctiveness and freedom it is inevitably led

into corruption and death.”578

It will affect our attitude toward other persons directly. Because the ultimate

ground is personhood rather than human nature, we should not treat persons in

terms of their qualities. We can distinguish one’s personhood from his behavior. It

is important for us to understand the qualities possessed by each person, but we

should not identify different persons by means of those qualities.

7.2 Criticisms and defenses of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood

7.2.1 Is Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood philosophical rather than

theological?

The most serious criticism of Zizioulas’ ontology of person is that his theological

ontology is taken from philosophy rather than theology. For example, two Greek

scholars, Panagopoulos and Agouridis, accuse Zizioulas of attributing to the

Fathers ideas that he has in reality imported from philosophical personalism and

578
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality, 144.
207
existentialism. 579 Papanikolaou writes: “Criticism of John Zizioulas’ relational

ontology of Trinitarian personhood generally rebukes him for attempting to dress

his philosophical personalism and existentialism with Cappadocian language and

parade it as patristic.”580 Behr claims that Zizioulas’ theology is a ‘philosophical’

and ‘existential’ attempt ‘to construct a metaphysical system’ which has for its aim

the description of ‘ultimate structures of ‘reality’, the elaboration of a ‘fundamental

ontology’. As such it cannot be, properly speaking, considered as ‘orthodox

theology’, but is rather ‘an odd mixture of metaphysics and mythology’.581

The dogmatic formulae of the Church are not abstract, detachable statements which we can
use to construct a metaphysical system responding to our existential or philosophical concerns.
Of course, theological reflection became ever more abstract, but the point of such ongoing
refection is not to describe ultimate structures of ‘reality’, to elaborate a fundamental ontology,
whether of ‘Being’ or ‘communion’ (or both), which then tends to function as if it constitutes
the content of the revelation itself. We must be very careful not to substitute the explanation for
that which it seeks to explain. The aim of such theological reflection was and is to articulate as
precisely as possible, in the face of perceived aberrations, the canon of truth, so as to preserve
the undisturbed image of the Christ presented in the Scriptures.582

Similarly, Louth criticizes that Zizioulas’s ground of theology is ‘personalist and

existentialist ontology’. 583 Following this, Zizioulas’ thought is rejected as

nineteenth-and twentieth-century ‘personalist’ and/or ‘existentialist’ philosophical

thought.584

579
See Norman Russell, “Modern Greek theologians and Greek Fathers,” Philosophy and Theology,
18 (1):77-92 (2006). See John Panagopoulos, “Ontology of Theology of Person” (in Greek), Synaxis,
Vol. 13-14 (1985), 63-79; 35-47; and Savas Agourides, “Can the Persons of the Trinity form the
Basis for Personalistic Understandings of the Human Being?” (in Greek), Synaxis, Vol. 33 (1990),
67-78.
580
Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Is John Zizioulas an Existentialist in Disguise? Response to Lucian
Turcescu,” Modern Theology 20:4/2004, ISSN 0266-7177 (Print); ISSN 1468-0025 (Online), 601.
581
John Behr, ‘The Trinitarian Being of the Chruch,’ St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 48.1/2004:
67-68.
582
John Behr, ‘Faithfulness and Creativity’, in Abba, 159-77, at 176; See Douglas H. Knight ed.,
The Theology of John Zizioulas: Person and the Church, 45.
583
Andrew Louth, John Damascene: Tradition and Originality in Byzantine Theology (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2002), 51.
584
Alan Brown, ‘On the Criticism of Being as Communion in Anglophone Orthodox Theology’, in
Douglas H. Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 40.
208
 In chapter two (section 2.2.1), I have introduced that Lucian Turcescu criticizes

Zizioulas for using ninesteenth and twentieth century ideas to understand the

Cappadocians. Turcescu insists that personhood is a concept about the individual.

In reply, Zizioulas admits that modern philosophy does influence his thinking but

he claims that it does not determine it. Zizioulas argues that the criticism above

does not really go to the root of things because it remains on the superficial level of

associations in terminology. Zizioulas responds to the criticism from two aspects.

Firstly, his ontology of personhood is not identical to philosophical personalism.

“Personalism as a philosophical movement has its roots in the understanding of

person introduced in the West by Augustine and formulated by Boethius in his

well-known definition ‘a person is the individual substance of the rational nature’.

This was the starting point of the whole of Western personalistic thought, through

Descartes and the Enlightenment to the first American personalists in the twentieth

century.”585 For all types of personalism, both in America and in Europe, their

common basis is to understand the concept of person as ‘consciousness’. Secondly,

Zizioulas distinguishes his personalism from that of M. Buber, G. Marcel and others

who treat communion or relationship as an ontological concept: “The concept of

communion … [becomes] a third concept between nature and person…The person

is conceived of within communion or as a result of it. Thus the person is

subordinated to the generality of relationship—communion. This point perhaps

misleads many people into confusing my views with those of that sort of

personalism.” 586 For Zizioulas, personhood is a primary concept and it is not

subordinated to relationship. The more detailed argument has been presented in

585
John Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 20.
586
Ibid., 21.
209
chapter two (section 2.4.2) when I distinguish the ontology of relationality from the

ontology of personhood.

I agree with Zizioulas’ response, because the whole theology of Zizioulas is

based on the personhood of Trinity, but other versions of philosophical personalism

hardly make use of the Trinitarian theology. Therefore, Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood is different from the philosophical personalism.

7.2.2 Defenses of Zizioulas’ personal ontology

Many theologians’ articles were collected by Douglas H. Knight in the book The

Theology of Zizioulas. The essays are mainly reflecting on the relationship between

the individual and the community and the very nature of God. They on the whole

defend Zizioulas’ ontology. Colin Gunton, in “Person and Particularity,”587 defends

Zizioulas’ theological concept of person. He thinks that Zizioulas traces the roots of

Western culture back to the thought of Augustine and Boethius which provides an

explanation for the individualistic tendency in which the other is regarded as a

threat.

Douglas Farrow, in ‘Person and Nature: The Necessity-Freedom Dialectic in

John Zizioulas’, 588 suggests that John Zizioulas presented an ontology of

personhood, an ontology which has at its heart what even the most optimistic

existentialism does not, that is, a concept of freedom through love: freedom through

being as an act of koinonia (communion) with God in which all necessity is

transcended.

Papanikolaou, in his book Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and

587
Colin Gunton, ‘Person and Particularity’, in Douglas Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas:
Personhood and the Church, 97-108.
588
Douglas Farrow, ‘Person and Nature: The Necessity-Freedom Dialectic in John Zizioulas’, in
Douglas Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 109-124.
210
Divine-Human Communion, critically analyzes the implications of Zizioulas’

reworking of the patristic category of hypostasis. His criticism mainly concerns the

monarchy of the Father. However, he still praises Zizioulas for suggesting a

paradigm shift in contemporary Eastern Orthodox theology insofar as it prioritizes

hypostasis over energies for expressing the realism of divine-human

communion.589

Patricia A. Fox contrast Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology with Elizabeth Johnson’s

in her book God as Communion: John Zizioulas, Elizabeth Johnson, and the

Retrieval of the Symbol of the Triune God. She agrees that Zizioulas’ idea: “is a

concept that springs from an ontology of person that has its roots in Greek patristic

theology.” 590 She introduces Zizioulas’ concept of person as “difference in

communion” without criticism.591

However, Zizioulas has some important supporters. For example, Gunton scarely

criticizes Zizioulas’ anthropology.592 But, Gunton mentions a little problem about

soteriology:
And yet much Orthodox theology fails adequately to encompass the deep fallenness of the
human condition, attested as that is both by Scripture’s emphasis on the cross as the centre of
the awesome process and the manifest need of fallen man for redemption. In a word, by failing
to take adequate account of the bondage of the will, Eastern theologians, among them John
Zizioulas, can appear to ascribe to the human capacity more than is justified apart from
593
redemption.

It seems that he realizes the defect of Zizoulas’ anthropology but he does not

provide a deep analysis.

589
Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion
(Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 25.
590
Patricia A. Fox, God as Communion: John Zizioulas, Elizabeth Johnson, and the Retrieval of the
Symbol of the Triune God (Minnesota: The Liturgical Press, 2001), 32.
591
Ibid., 48.
592
Gunton, Colin E. “Trinity, Ontology and Anthropology: Towards a Renewal of the Doctrine of
the Imago Dei”, In C. Schwobel and C. Gunton eds., Persons Divine and Human (Edinburgh: T&T.
Clark, 1991), 47-64.
593
Colin Gunton, “Persons and Particularity”, in Douglas H. Knight ed., The Theology of John
Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 104.
211
 Farrow points out that Zizioulas does not explain a difficulty: how the personal

existence of God can be applied to the being of humans in view of the different

essences of God and man: “But this distinction between God’s nature or substance

and his ‘personal life’ or ‘personal existence’ is itself problematic; indeed it is not

clear how Zizioulas can make such a distinction, or that we should follow him in

doing so. And it becomes even more problematic if the latter is abstracted in such a

way as to make it strictly transferable to human beings.” 594 Farrow questions

Zizioulas but he does not elaborate further this line of criticism.

Alan Brown introduces the realization of the new hypostatic mode of existence

through love without criticism. “Thus, so hypostasized, man is able to transcend the

relationships of biological existence through a love which loves ‘not because the

laws of biology oblige [it] to’… Such love—precisely in its

non-exclusiveness—transcends all fallen individualism, and expresses rather a

‘catholic mode of existence’, which expresses not a ‘mutually exclusive portion’ of

being, but rather being as ‘a single whole…without division’.”595

7.3 My criticism: lack of proper doctrines of justice and sin in

Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood
Despite Zizioulas denies that he is anti-essence,596 it is still true that the concept

of essence is largely lacking in Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology (see chapter two). It

594
Douglas Farrow, ‘Person and Nature: The Necessity-Freedom Dialectic’, in Douglas H. Knight
ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 119.
595
Alan Brown, ‘On the Criticism of Being as Communion in Anglophone Orthodox Theology’, in
Douglas H. Knight ed., The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 64.
596
Zizioulas defends himself when a Greek theologian criticizes him: “I have stressed repeatedly
that the person cannot be conceived of without the essence, and the essence of God cannot be
conceived of ‘in a naked state,’ without the person. In consequence, the charge of being
‘anti-essence’ is not applicable to me, and the statement that ‘the only divine essence of God is His
existence” is a complete distortion of my position.” Zizioulas takes the concept of ‘love’ as an
example: “Love in this sense is common to the three Persons, meaning that it relates to the essence
or nature of God”. See John Zizioulas, The One and the Many, 22.
212
influences Zizioulas’ anthropology directly, i.e., the concepts of ‘justice’ and ‘sin’

are missing in his soteriology. As a result, Zizioulas’ theology seems to ignore some

of the crucial elements of the Bible. In fact, justice and sin can be explained from an

ontological and relational perspective. It means that they are not only concepts of

ethics.

7.3.1 Sin only as an ethical concept for Zizioulas

In chapter three (section 3.3), I discuss two modes of existence: biological and

ecclesial hypostasis. Salvation means a transformation from biological to ecclesial

hypostasis. Soteriology first deals with an ontological issue. According to

Zizioulas, the ontological problem for human persons is death: “Orthodoxy

continues to insist upon the Resurrection as the centre of its whole life precisely

because it sees that the problem of the created is not moral but ontological; it is the

problem of the existence (and not the beauty) of the world, the problem of death.”597

Death is a state of life which is caused by the rupture between being and

communion. So salvation means a reconciliation of relationship: “In order to

continue in existence, and overcome his limits and the eventual dissolution that they

bring, the creature has to be in relationship with the uncreated God.” 598 The

process of salvation is how Jesus brings the world back to a living relationship with

God.

For Zizioulas, sin is an ethical problem. In Zizioulas’ viewpoint, ethics involves

human action or activity. Zizioulas applies the view of Bourke: ethics is “the

philosophical study of voluntary human action, with the purpose of determining

what types of activity are good, right, and to be done…what the ethicist aims at,

597
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 261.
598
John Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 98.
213
then, is a reflective, well-considered, and reasonable set of conclusions concerning

the kinds of voluntary activities that may be judged good or suitable or evil and

unsuitable…”599 Ethics operates on the basis of the polarity between good and evil.

He observes that the “West (Catholic and Protestant) has viewed the problem of

the world as a moral problem (transgression of a commandment and punishment)

and has made of the Cross of Christ the epicenter of faith and worship.” 600

However, Zizioulas thinks that ‘sin’ is not the reason for the necessity of the

atonement, and sin is not one of the fundamental categories of soteriology. In fact,

the necessity of salvation is not based on the sin of man, but death. The purpose of

salvation is the union between the created and the uncreated rather than the

individual sanctification which is emphasized by Western theologians. Here

Zizioulas’ theology manifests the general tendency of Orthodox theology. “The joy

of the resurrection—that is the key-note of the Eastern Church’s whole outlook upon

the world.” 601

Naturally Zizioulas avoids the Cross as the center of salvation. Gunton writes:

“Confession of sin does indeed bulk large in Eastern liturgy, but appears to have

little structural effect on Orthodox theology. It may be the case that Western

soteriology sometimes suffers by comparison with that of the East in failing to make

enough of the ontological coefficients of salvation.”602

7.3.2 Sin as an ontological problem and a relational conception

It is wrong for Zizioulas to understand sin only as a moral concept. He needs a

599
V. J. Bourke, ‘Ethics’, New Catholic Encyclopedia, 2nd ed., 2003, vol. 5, p. 388f. Cf. John
Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 81-82, footnote, 180.
600
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 261.
601
Nicholas Arseniev, Mysticism and the Eastern Church (Crestwood, New York: St. Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1979), 17.
602
Colin Gunton, ‘Persons and Particularity’, in Douglas H. Knight ed., The Theology of John
Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, 104.
214
relational or ontological understanding of ‘sin’ among persons too.

In Zizioulas’ writing, he does not distinguish the concept of ‘sin’ in its different

levels. We should affirm that ‘sin’ is not only a moral conception. In Western

theology, the idea of sin or evil is essential for understanding human nature. It is not

only treated as a category of ethics. There is metaphysical understanding of the

concept of sin which I have argued in chapter six (section 6.2.3) through

Augustine’s theology.

According to an Orthodox theologian, Vladimir Lossky, evil is not an essentialist

concept, but a personalist one: “It thus appears as an illness, as a parasite existing

only by virtue of the nature he lives off. More precisely, it is a state of the will of this

nature; it is a fallen will with regard to God. Evil is revolt against God, that is to say,

a personal attitude. The exact vision of evil is thus not essentialist but

personalist.”603
Kierkegaard also interprets sin from the existential perspective:
The very concept in which Christianity differs most crucially in kind from paganism is: sin, the
doctrine of sin. And so, quite consistently, Christianity also assumes that neither paganism nor
the natural man know what sin is; yes, it assumes there must be a revelation from God to reveal
what sin is. It is not the case, as superficial reflection supposes, that the doctrine of the
atonement is what distinguishes paganism and Christianity qualitatively. No, the beginning has
to be made far deeper, with sin, with the doctrine of sin, which is also what Christianity does.604

Christos Yannaras claims that sin is a mode of existence contrary to authentic

existence. It means separation from being and exclusion from life. The restoration

to the fullness of life and existence can take place only if man undergoes an

existential change.605 Therefore, sin is not essential to our nature, because in God’s

creation there is nothing which is hypostatically and naturally evil. “Sin is a failure,

603
Vladimir Lossky, Orthodox Theology: An Introduction, trans. Ian and Ihita Kesarcodi-Watson
(New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1989), 80.
604
Søren Kierkegaard, The Sickness unto Death, ed. S. Kierkegaard (New York: Penguin Books,
1989), 122.
605
Christos Yannaras, The Freedom of Morality (New York: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1984),
35-37.
215
a failure as to existence and life: it is the failure of persons to realize their

existential ‘end’, to confirm and conserve the uniqueness of their hypostasis

through love.”606

Bultmann has a wonderful analysis of the human condition under sin: ‘I’ and ‘my

flesh’ can be equated. The true self of a man is thereby dissociating itself from this

self that has fallen victim to flesh. “This inner dividedness means that man himself

destroys his true self. In his self-reliant will to be himself, a will that comes to light

in ‘desire’ at the encounter with the ‘commandment,’ he loses his self, and ‘sin’

becomes the active subject within him (Romans 7:9). ”607 It implies that sin is a loss

of being. Sin manifests an inner relation with self and with God. Therefore,

although Paul emphasizes the moral good or evil, he does not separate moral action

from the being of humans.

According to the existentialist theologian John Macquarrie, sin involves not only

ethics. He says: “[Sin] implies not only moral evil but alienation from God…Sin in

the New Testament is an ontical conception—it describes not only a possibility for

man but his actual condition.”608 He uses an illustration to clarify this concept.

When Paul says that ‘all have sinned’ (Romans 3:23), he is making an ontical

statement: the entity which we call man has fallen into the condition which we call

sin, and that this is true of all men. This ontical statement can only be properly

understood if it is clarified ontologically.609

All in all, from the existential perspective, sin means rejecting a relationship with

God. Though sin lacks an essence, it manifests itself as a broken relationship with

God. However, Zizioulas’ treatment of sin lacks an ontological personalist

606
Ibid., 34.
607
Rudolf Bultmann, Theology of the New Testament, trans. Kendrick Grobel (Tübingen: SCM
Press Ltd. 1952), 245.
608
John Macquarrie, An Existentialist Theology, 103.
609
Ibid., 30.
216
dimension. It seems that he has excessively separated ethical problems and

ontological issues. This is a fatal weakness of Zizioulas’ theology. From a

perspective of the individual, human incapability under the power of sin is not

emphasized by Zizioulas. From the perspective of community, this mistake will

lead us to overlook the responsibility for the serious consequence of sin, because

Zizioulas regards sin as only a moral problem and Christians, according to him,

should focus instead on the relationship with God, i.e., an ontological problem. I

will elaborate further below.

7.3.3 Divine-human communion lacking the idea of justice

Facing Zizioulas’ writing Being as Communion, many theologians praise his

view. For example, Alan Torrance writes: “That opened up the profound

anthropological implications of the intra-divine communion and our being brought

‘economically’ to participate within it by the Spirit and in and through the

priesthood of Christ.” 610 However, few critics ask Zizioulas: “what kind of

divine-human communion is it?”

The core of the Orthodox theological tradition is divine-human communion: “It

is a central axiom or thinking about God, Christ, theological anthropology,

ecclesiology and epistemology. Lossky, Yannaras and Zizioulas share the consensus

that divine-human communion could not be otherwise expressed than through the

concept of personhood”.611 For Lossky, true knowledge of God is not propositional,

but mystical knowledge which goes beyond reason without denying it. 612 The

610
Alan J. Torrance, Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation, 305.
611
Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Personhood and its exponents in twentieth-century Orthodox theology”,
in Mary B. Cunningham and Elizabeth Theokritoff ed., The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox
Christian Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 233.
612
Vladimir Lossky, The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (Crestwood, NY: SVS Press,
1976), 38-39.
217
purpose of theology is to guide the believer towards an experience of divine-human

communion. For Yannaras, in the experience of union with God, the knowledge of

God is an ‘erotic affair’ and the ‘gift of an erotic relationship’.613 For Zizoulas, the

divine-human communion is an ecstatic event in which the human person

transcends the limitation of finite nature towards an eternal communion with God.

Zizioulas regards ‘love’ as a representation of freedom: “Love is identified with

ontological freedom.” 614 ‘Righteousness’ and ‘holy’ are not included in the

implication of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood, because Zizioulas understands

these concepts as ethical principles. He even suggests that this ethical principle is in

tension with the teachings of Christ:

It follows from this that the Christian ethos of otherness cannot be based on ethical principles
such as justice and the pursuit of happiness…But in fact the idea of justice is absent from
Christ’s teaching in a way that is provocative to all ethics since Aristotle: he likens God to the
householder who paid the labourers in his vineyard the same amount whether they had worked
one hour or twelve hours (Mt. 20. 1-16); this is the same God who ‘sends rain on the just and on
the unjust’ (Mt. 5. 45), and loves the sinner equally or more than the righteous. (Mt. 9.13; Lk. 18.
9-14 etc.) 615

When Zizioulas says that ‘the idea of justice is absent from Christ’s teaching’, he

understands the concept of justice on the ethical level in terms of the philosophy of

Aristotle. He is afraid of justice being understood as ontological and ethical

principles. However, he does not have a sufficiently deep understanding of the

concept of justice, and his examples are incomplete. For example, we can take ‘the

parable of the unforgiving servant’ as an example: “Then his lord summoned him

and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded

with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on

you? And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his

613
Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, ed.
A. Louth (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2005), 86.
614
Ibid., 46.
615
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 86.
218
entire debt. So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not

forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” (Matthew 18.32-35) From this story,

we can find that the justice of God is accompanied by mercy and grace. In other

words, there is a presupposition for Justice: God’s grace. The purpose of God is to

bring us back to him. Therefore, the action of God cannot be judged only by an

ethical principle of justice in the sense of philosophy. However, it does not mean

that there is no view of justice in the Bible.

As I have argued in chapter six, influenced by Maximus the Confessor, Zizioulas

insists on an ontological principle when he understands the communion with the

Other: the Other is prior to the Self. The ascetic life is a good example: “This

theological justification of ascetic self-emptying for the sake of the Other is deeply

rooted in patristic thought, particularly in that of St Maximus the Confessor.

Maximus locates the roots of evil in self-love.” 616 This model of communion

implies demoralization or a-moralization of human life. 617 It provides an

ontological ground for the existence of the Other. However, this ontological

principle is not enough for us to understand the existence of a society, because this

kind of understanding of communion lacks a view of justice.

In fact, justice is not only an ethical category, but also a relational or ontological

concept, i.e., justice means a right relationship. In other words, justice is manifested

through a kind of relationship. As Levinas writes: “Justice consists in recognizing

in the Other my master.” 618 Zizioulas’ principle does not involve the issue of

equality when the relationship is limited by I-Thou. However, since we live in

plural relationships, what happens if this principle conflicts with the third party? As

616
Ibid., 84.
617
Ibid., 82.
618
Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis
(Pittsburgh: Duquesne Univ. Press, 1969), 72.
219
Levinas writes: “If proximity ordered to me only the other alone, there would not

have been any problem.”619 Levinas suggests the necessity of moving from the

realm of ethics to that of justice which is guided by impartiality and universal

principles, because of the notion of the ‘third’. The character of this kind of justice

is equality. All in all, justice as right relationship exists between two persons and

between more than two persons. Dogenes Allen insists: “In Christianity, however,

justice must always be considered, even when you deal with those who are weaker.

You must always take others into account; not as a matter of mercy, but as a matter

of justice, for there is an absolute equality between people. People are not equal in

earthly ways, but our absolute equality is not based on earthly matters.”620

According to the Bible, righteousness and justice have both the ontological

content and the ethical dimension which are grounded in the existence of God:

“Righteousness and justice are the foundation of your throne.” (Psalms 89:14).

“Righteousness art Thou, O Lord, and upright are Thy judgment (Psalms 119: 137)

Brakel defines the righteousness of God: “The righteousness of God can be

considered either in and of itself as referring to the justness, perfection, and

holiness of the character of God; or in view of its manifestation toward the creature.

As such the righteousness or justice of God consists in giving each his worthy due,

either by punishment or reward.”621

For Luther, justice is a relational concept. He distinguishes two kinds of

righteousness, namely the righteousness of Christ and the righteousness of the

human being. They form an indivisible entity. Christ is accepted by faith, and then

619
Ibid., 32.
620
Diogenes Allen, “Christian Values in a Post-Christian Context,” in Fredric B. Burnham ed.,
Postmodern Theology: Christian Faith in a Pluralist World (Oregon: Wipf and Stock Publishers,
1989), 29.
621
Wilhelmus á Brakel, The Christian’s Reasonable Service, chapter Three. See
http://www.davidcox.com.mx/library/B/Brakel%20-%20Christian's%20Reasonable%20Service%2
0(Systematic%20Theology).pdf
220
the righteousness of Christ is infused into the human heart.622 “But we who live by

the Spirit eagerly wait to receive by faith the righteousness God has promised to

us.” (Galatians 5:5) Thus, righteousness is both an ontological and a relational

concept: “To be righteous means making just, setting a person in a right

srelationship with God and with others. Even when justification requires individual

response, it is not merely individualistic; it is integrally related to God’s saving

purposes for the covenant community and to the coming of the kingdom of God.

Righteousness is a relational concept and has implications for both divine-human

and human-human relationships.”623

Therefore, a communion with God should include the meaning of justice. When

Zizioulas’ understanding of ‘justice’ or ‘righteousness’ are not on an ontological

level, the idea of justice cannot provide an ontological foundation for us to

understand society. I will further analyze the problem from the social dimension.

7.3.4 Detachment from the injustice of reality

According to the ontology of Zizioulas, only an ontological concept of love can

be the ground of ethics. Because ‘justice’ is not on the ontological level, our attitude

towards others can only be ‘love’. His theological ontology limits in the scope of

Church’s involvement. 624 That ‘the Other prior to the self’ as an ontological

principle cannot provide an adequate ground for the social structure, because of the

lack of the notion of ‘justice’. So this kind of theology runs the risk of becoming

detached from the injustice of reality. Zizioulas writes:

Obviously, this kind of ethos would be inapplicable in a justly, that is, morally, organized
society. It would be inconceivable to regulate social life on such a basis, for there would be no

622
Martin Luther, Weimarer Ausgabe (Latin original of Luther’s works) 2, 146, 29-30; 36; 12-16,
32-35. See Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, One with God: Salvation as Deification and Justification, 53-54.
623
Ibid., 122.
624
From the theme of Zizioulas’ book Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church,
we can know his scope.
221
 room for law and order if this attitude to the Other were to become a principle of ethics.
Societies are organized on the assumption that evil can be controlled only if it is somehow
identified with the evil-doer, for it is not evil as such but the person who commits the evil act
that can be the subject of law. Given that justice is a fundamental principle of ethics and law, any
transference of moral responsibility for an evil act from the person who committed it to
someone else would be totally unethical.625

LaCugna criticizes: “This critique of the social dimension of personhood is

missing from Zizioulas’ thought.”626 For LaCugna, salvation is not only involving

an individual, but also a community in a relationship:

Living as persons in communion, in right relationship, is the meaning of salvation and the ideal
of Christian faith. God is interactive, neither solitary nor isolated. Human beings are created in
the image of the relational God and gradually are being perfected in that image, making more
and more real the communion of all creatures with one another. The doctrine of the Trinity
stresses the relational character of personhood over and against the reduction of personhood to
individual self-consciousness and also emphasizes the uniqueness and integrity of personhood
over and against the reduction of personhood to a product of social relations. Thus it can serve
as a critique of cultural norms of personhood, whether that of ‘rugged individualism’ or ‘me
first’ morality, as well as patterns of inequality based on gender, race, ability, and so forth. 627

LaCugna takes feminist theology and Latin American liberation theology as

examples: “Both types of theology typically appeal to the Latin doctrine of the

Trinity to support a vision of authentic human community structured according to

the divine community, characterized by equality, mutuality, and reciprocity among

persons.”628

Zizioulas’ Trinitarian theology and anthropology does not tend to provide an

ontological basis for social justice. It manifests a theological ethos of the East: “In

the East, the cross of Christ is envisaged not so much as the punishment of the just

one, which ‘satisfies’ transcendent Justice requiring a retribution for human

beings’ sin…The point was not to satisfy a legal requirement, but to vanquish

625
John Zizioulas, Communion and Otherness, 87.
626
Cathrine Mowry LaCugna, God for Us, 266.
627
Ibid., 292.
628
Ibid., 266.
222
death.” 629 It also reflects a tendency of Greek theology: “Greek theology is

weighted toward an ontology of oikonomia, yet it tends to take refuge in the

unknowable, unspecifiable divine essence (Theologia), thereby having less to say in

the end about the pattern of relationships among persons in the oikonomia.”630 This

type of theology which lacks the perspective of righteousness might lead to serious

consequence in the community and society. We may consider the religious situation

of Russia in the 20th century. There is an emphasis on mystical nature in Russian

religion. Julius Hecker describes their religious life:

Holy Russia, dotted with churches, sacred shrines, and monasteries, is perpetually
worshipping. Every day has its saint. The churches are always open and there are always
people devoutly kneeling, bowing, and crossing themselves before richly decorated shrines
and altars. In the streets of pre-war Russia men and women would stop piously to cross
themselves at eh sight of an ikon, a shrine, a church, or a funeral procession, and whisper
their ‘Gospody Pomiluy’ (Lord, be merciful!).631

There are no emphasis on the concepts of righteousness and social justice in the

existence of the particular and the community. In the 20th century, The Church in

Russia had no ability to resist the Bolshevik Communist party. The government was

controlled by the Bolsheviks which were staunch materialists and atheists. Religion

was to them ‘opiate of the people”. The church remained deaf to the spiritual needs

of the age. “The Church actually stood aside in this struggle for truth and the

welfare of humanity. The upper hierarchs had taken sides with the enemies of the

people.”632 They did not care about social justice and people’s troubles. Father

Gregory Petroff, a priest living at that time, was a remarkable man with a clear

prophetic vision. He provides a good analysis of their theology and Church:

We have to-day, after nineteen centuries of preaching, individual Christians, separate persons,
but no Christianity; there is no Christian legislation; our customs and morals are no longer

629
Ibid., 22.
630
Ibid., 288.
631
Julius F. Hecker, Religion under the Soviets (New York: Vanguard Press, 1927), 2.
632
Ibid., 85-86.
223
 Christian; there exists no Christian government. It is strange to speak of the Christian world.
The mutual relations of the various people are altogether contrary to the spirit of the gospel; the
most Christian states maintain millions of men for mass butcheries, sometimes of their
neighbors and sometimes of their own citizens… God was reasoned about without being
introduced into life itself.633

633
Ibid., 166-167.
224
 Conclusion
I have explored Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood in this dissertation.

In Part I, I introduced the background and the source of Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood according to the change of the concept of person in the theological

history. I stressed the important significance of this change which renews

Christians’ thinking by a clear contrast between Greek substantialism and the

Cappadocian Fathers’ personalism. The change is not only a theological necessity,

but also a historical reality. The ontological revolution has influenced the creed of

Constantinople and Chalcedonian Christology. As Protestant Christians, we believe

these creeds, but we have not noticed the ontological meaning. In other words, our

thinking remains in the substantialist framework. Therefore, we have not grasped

the meaning of personhood according to the Greek Fathers. Furthermore, we cannot

set up a view of the living or personal God to replace a substantial view of God

which is influenced by Greek substantialism; neither can we build up a Christian

anthropology which excludes the influence of Greek philosophy. The most

important issue of Greek philosophy which influences Christianity is Greek idea of

truth. Theological argument takes root in the view of truth. Therefore, Zizioulas

traced his idea of truth to the Eucharist theology of Ignatius and Irenaeus, which

identify truth with life. Based on this, there is a possibility of the ontological

revolution which identifies hypostasis with personhood for the Cappadocians. The

great significance of this ontological revolution is that dogmatism will be

reasonably criticized.

In chapter two, I argued that Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood is not wholly

identified with that of the Cappadocians. Some critics believe that Zizioulas

misunderstood the Cappadocian concept of divine person. However, when we

225
contrast Zizioulas’ ontological concept of personhood with the approach of

substantialism, it is easy to tell the difference between Zizioulas’ ontological

concept and the Cappadocians’. Therefore, we say that it is not a misunderstanding

but a difference.

Zizioulas sets up his own theological ontology exclusive of the concept of ousia,

which is different from the substantialist theology. Meanwhile, Zizioulas

distinguishes himself from the ontology of relationality. For the ontology of

realtionality, Zizioulas believes that the ultimate element of decision is Self rather

than the Other. When he compares his ontology with the ontology of relationality,

Zizioulas puts more emphasis on the priority of the Other.

In chapter three of Part II, I analyzed two types of existence according to

Zizioulas’ understanding: biological hypostasis and ecclesial hypostasis. The

Western traditional way takes a different approach to understand the human being

in terms of a being-in-itself or being-by-itself. The authentic personhood is decided

by the person of God the Father and Christ is the way to person existence. Therefore,

the anthropology must be constructed by the relationship with God. The

personhood of God the Father generates personal otherness and communion. It is

the ontological foundation for the theological anthropology.

In chapter four, I explored that personal otherness and communion directly

renew the understanding of personhood in Western theology, which simultaneously

transforms the relationships among human beings from impersonal relationships to

personal relationships. This kind of understanding provides the possibility for us to

ponder over that the problem of the poor and the oppressed is not ethical but

ontological. The suffering of the others connects our existence with our

responsibility according to the ontological perspective rather than the ethical

perspective. It transcends Levinas’ philosophy which involves the Other.

226
 In Part III, I assessed the significance of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood by

contrast with the Western substantialist view of God and the human person.

Subtantialist view of God and anthropology are not directly related to Christian life

or existence, especially the individualist understanding in the concept of person

since Augustine brings a huge problem which does not include the otherness and

communion. In other words, the individual dignity should not be respected in

theological history which has been dominated by substantialism. When Zizioulas

traced the personas identity to God, this condition started to be changed, for the

particular was raised to the level of ontological primacy. Each particular is affirmed

as uniquene and irreplaceable by the others. This kind of ontological identity

determines that our attitude to the other cannot depend on the quality of the other. A

substantial understanding of human person cannot accommodate the particular in

an ultimate or primary way. Based on this, Zizioulas made a great contribution to

explain personal identity through the person of God. Human identity and equality

are not only the categories of the contemporary humanism, but also the theology

which can be found in patristic thought. In the ultimate sense, Christian life can be

comprehended on the ontological level. I believe that Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood is a better theological approach which can remedy the flaws of

substantialist theology. It integrates the academic with life orientations. Zizioulas

provides a good foundation for further study for theological anthropology.

On the other hand, there are some shortcomings in Zizioulas’ ontology of

personhood. The real defect of Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood lies in his

anthropology: lack of the consciousness of sin and the notion of justice. Zizioulas

places the concepts of sin and justice on the ethical level. It is his failure not to

explain the concept of sin and justice ontologically. At the same time his

understanding of the concept of sin in Western theology is inadequate.

227
 Therefore, according to Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood, only love and the

principle of ‘the Other prior to the Self’ can provide an ontological foundation for

human moral action. However, the principle of ‘the Other prior to the Self’ alone is

not an adequate ontological ground or ethical principle for the existence of a society.

Therefore, he has nothing positive to contribute to the understanding of the

Christian community or the socialproblems like injustice. This is one of the weakest

points in Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood.

However, despite these defects, the rich reflections of John Zizioulas clearly

break away from the individualism of Western framework. In fact, I argue that from

Zizioulas’ ontology of personhood itself, when properly understood and articulated,

we can also develop a critical attitude towards our existence in a society, because all

of us have an equal worth which is based on a relationship with God. It means that

person as relation-to-another is rightly regarded as the basic given of existence, as

well as a foundation for our experience and identity. Along this line, we can have a

thought foundation on which to develop a more adequate kind of ontological

theology. Not only that it can be used to critique the concrete shape of the social

order, it can also be used for cultural criticism and the rebuilding of a new

relationship in the community. Of course, this thesis can only hint at all these. This

is a task for the future.

228
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 CURRICULUM VITAE

Academic qualifications of the thesis author, Miss. Jiang Tingcui:

• Received the degree of Bachelor of Theology from Zhongnan Seminary,

June, 2002.

• Received the degree of Master of Philosophy from Wuhan University, June,

2006.

• Received the degree of Master of Christian Studies from China Graduate

School of Theology, June, 2008.

October 2014

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