Daniel Wright

Zizioulas’s Trinitarian theology—indeed, the whole of his theological system—rests on a particular concept of personhood. There is no dearth of explication, analysis, and criticism of the Metropolitan’s views regarding the Trinity, but all seem to underappreciate or misunderstand the “revolution” of personal ontology that he attributes to the Cappadocian Fathers. Interpreters have tended to draw hasty conclusions about his Trinitarian project and read him with the narrow aim of fitting his thought into a Procrustean bed made from existentialism, personalism, social Trinitarianism, or hierarchicalism.  Certainly one can find elements of each of these in his writings. The fundamental insight that Zizioulas discovers in the Cappadocians, however, is far more innovative than anyone has thus far recognized. Yet it is understandable that Zizioulas should be misunderstood in such a variety of ways, since he rarely exhibits a sustained concern for terminological precision. In what follows, therefore, I offer a novel reading of Zizioulas’s theological personalism that distills, develops, and defends his Trinitarian ontology.

Zizioulas is not interested in what it means for humans to be like the divine persons.  His focus is on what it means for human beings to transcend their humanity and enter into the communal life of the Trinity. His anthropology is therefore less a study of humanity and more a study of deification disabused of analogy and equivocation. We might sum up Zizioulas’s anthropology by rephrasing the aphorism: A person became human, that humans might become persons. As we move from a discussion of the persons of the Trinity ad intra to a discussion of their work ad extra, the primacy of personhood over substance becomes allied to the primacy of the eschaton over history. Salvation is the event wherein the eschatological future breaks into the historical present. Or again, salvation can be described as the realm of personhood breaking into the realm of substance. Likewise, deification is not achieved by moral progress toward divine likeness but by ontological transformation unto personal communion. For Zizioulas, personhood applies to humans not as they are but as they are created to become in the eschatological future.

Something of a rift has opened up in modern Orthodox theology between those who see deification as an ascetical achievement and those who see it as a sacramental gift.  Both sides agree on three fundamental principles. First, God’s being is distinct from God’s activities. Second, deification entails an ontological transformation and not merely moral imitation of God. And third, both sides agree that God’s substance is imparticipable. Furthermore, both sides find ample support among the Fathers. I argue that while the ascetical approach cannot coherently account for a direct connection between ascetical practices and ontological transformation without violating at least one of these principles, a careful account of the sacramental approach can maintain all three without contradiction.

This chapter argues that Zizioulas’s eucharistic ecclesiology—far from rejecting or devaluing ascetical theology—requires a robust notion of ascesis. Critics assume a narrow view of asceticism whereby pious struggle for virtue is identified with the process of deification.  But Zizioulas’s theology utilizes a different notion of ascesis, derived from the desert fathers, whereby pious struggle is aimed at greater depths of repentance rather than greater heights of virtue. Consequently, I argue that the doctrine of deification requires that the sacraments take priority over ascesis. If ascesis is an essential aspect of the Christian life, it must be defined as the penitential pre-condition of communion with God.

Zizioulas’s theological personalism and eucharistic ecclesiology have been invoked by various other theologians in order to promote a Christian ethics based on the notion of communion.  The problem is that these theologians invariably confuse and conflate ontological communion with moral communion. Consequently, the relationship between the Church ad intra and the Church ad extra is blurred or lost altogether. The Sacraments are problematically equated with moral imperatives. Such confusion betrays a misunderstanding of the fundamental distinction driving Zizioulas’s theology. For Zizioulas, the purpose of moral action is penitence, not pietistic perfection. Nor does moral behavior have the power to bring about union with God. Only the sacraments can bestow ontological deification. Without this distinction between morality and ontology, Zizioulas’s theology has little to offer to Christian ethics. Indeed, without this distinction Christian ethics has little to differentiate it from, or commend it beyond, other forms of religious and secular ethics.