Zizioulas, (Metropolitan) John

1. Entity type Person
2. Name in other language Ιωάννης Ζηζιούλας (en)
3. Birth date 10 January 1931
4. Birth place Kozani, Greece
5. Gender Name Male
6. Note Public PRIMARY BIBLIOGRAPHY: - Hē Henotēs Tēs Ekklēsias En Tē Theia Eucharistia Kai T Episkopō Kata Tous Treis Prōtous Aiōnas. (En Athi̲nais, 1965). Doctoral Dissertation. Published in French translation as L’eucharistie, l'évêque et l'église durant les trois premiers siècles. 2nd ed. translated by Jean-Louis Palierne. (Paris: Desclée De Brouwer, 1994). Published in English translation as Eucharist, Bishop, Church. - L'Être ecclésial (Paris: Labor et Fides, 1981). Published in English translation as Being as Communion. - E Ktise os eucharistia (Athens: Akritas, 1992). This would be rendered in English as Creation as Eucharist. This work is based on lectures previously delivered in English. Available in three parts: King's Theological Review vol. 12, no. 1 (1989): 1-5, no. 2 (1989): 41-45, vol. 13, no. 1 (1990): 1-5. - Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's 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). - Ellenismos kai Christianismos: H Synantese ton duo Kosmon (Athens: Apostolike Diakonia, 2003). This would be rendered in English as Hellenism and Christianity: The Meeting of Two Worlds. - Communion & 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 (Sebastian Press, 2010) . - Remembering the Future: An Eschatological Ontology (London: T&T Clark, 2012). BIBLIOGRAPHIES DEVOTED TO ZIZIOULAS' PUBLISHED WORKS IN VARIOUS LANGUAGES IN: - McPartlan, Paul. The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri De Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993. - Papanikolaou, Aristotle. Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. - Malecki, Roman. Kosciol jako wspolnota. Dogmatyczno-ekumeniczne studium eklezjologii Johna Zizioulasa (In English: The Church as Communion. A Dogmatic and Ecumenical Study of Ecclesiology of John Zizioulas). Lublin: RW KUL, 2000. SECONDARY BIBLIOGRAPHY: - Alan Brown, "On the Criticism of 'Being as Communion' in Anglophone – -Orthodox Theology", in Douglas Knight (ed.) The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Ashgate, 2006). - Aristotle Papanikolaou. Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006). - Lucian Turcescu, "Person versus Individual and Other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa", Modern Theology 18/ 4 (October 2002): 527-539.
7. Biographical Data

   1. Born on 10 January 1931 in Kozani (northern Greece), John Zizioulas is the Eastern Orthodox Metropolitan of Pergamon. He is member of the Academy of Athens (Systematic theology) and one of the most influential Orthodox Christian theologians today.

      Metropolitan John's education began with study at the Universities of Thessaloniki and Athens in 1950, and then a year at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey in 1955. Between 1960 and 1964 Zizioulas did doctoral research under the Eastern Orthodox theologian Georges Florovsky (1893-1979; Chair of Eastern Church History at Harvard and a member of the Russian Orthodox Church) and was a Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies. He received his doctorate in 1965 from the University of Athens. He took up a post at the University of Athens in 1964 as Assistant Professor of Church History, and then six years later, worked as Professor of Patristics at the University of Edinburgh from 1970 until 1973. He moved to the University of Glasqow where he held a personal chair in systematic theology for some fourteen years. In addition, he has been a Visiting Professor at the Research Institute in Systematic Theology of King's College London. In 1986, he was elected titular Metropolitan of Pergamon. In the same year, he assumed a full-time academic post at Thessaloniki School of Theology as Professor of Dogmatics.

      The theological work of Metropolitan John has focused upon the twin themes of  ecclesiology and theological ontology. His theological thought reflects the influence of Russian émigré theologians such as Nikolai Afnassief, Vladimir Lossky and Georges Florovsky. He has also been significantly influenced by the ascetical theology of Archimandrite Sophrony (Sakharov), founder of the Stavropegic Monastery of St John the Baptist in Essex, England.

      Zizioulas' ecclesiology was first developed in his doctoral dissertation, subsequently published in English as Εucharist, Bishop, Church. Metropolitan John develops critically the eucharistic ecclesiology of Nikolai Afanassief and accepts Afanassieff's principal contention that the Church is to be understood in terms of the Eucharist. However, he criticises Afanassief's understanding as overly congregational and insufficiently episcopal in its emphasis. Finally, Zizioulas advocates an episcopocentric understanding of Church structure, understanding the Bishop primarily as the president of the Divine Liturgy and the Eucharistic community.

      Metropolitan John Zizioulas worked on the theology of the person, appealing to the work of St Irinaeus and St Maximus the Confessor. The primary focus of his work was to develop his own ontology of personhood derived from an extensive investigation of Greek philosophy, patristic era writings and modern rationalist philosophy. He argues that full humanity is achieved only as person so that they may participate (koinonia-communion) in the Trinitarian life of God. However, an essential component of the ontology of personhood is the freedom to self-affirm the participation in relationship. He continues that man initially exists as a biological hypostasis, constrained as to the types of relationships one can have (biological) and to the eventual end of this type of being - death. Zizioulas makes use of existentialist philosophers and novelists. He claims that Baptism constitutes an ontological change in the human, making them an ecclesial hypostasis, or a person. This rebirth 'from above' gives new ontological freedom as it is not constrained by the limits of biological existence. Such ecclesial being is eschatological, meaning it is a paradoxical 'now,' but 'not yet.' The completion of this rebirth from above is the day of resurrection when the body will no longer be subject to death.

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