Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church by John D. Zizioulas
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Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church
John D. Zizioulas
Bibliographic Information
Author: Zizioulas, John D. Full Title: Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church Publisher: St Vladimir's Seminary Press Year of Publication: 1985 (reprinted 1997) Pages: 269 pp. ISBN: 978-0-88141-029-7Series: Contemporary Greek Theologians, No. 4
Author Background
John D. Zizioulas (1931–2023), Metropolitan of Pergamon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople from 1986 until his death, was widely recognized as the most significant Orthodox theologian of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. His theological education began at the Universities of Thessaloniki and Athens (1950), continued at the Ecumenical Institute of Bossey (1955), and culminated in doctoral research at Harvard under the direction of Georges Florovsky (1960–1964), one of the leading voices in twentieth-century Orthodox theology and a key figure in the Neo-Patristic synthesis that sought to recover the theological riches of the Greek Fathers for contemporary theology. Zizioulas also served as a Fellow at Dumbarton Oaks Center for Byzantine Studies during this period, giving him deep immersion in patristic sources and Byzantine theological tradition.
His academic career spanned multiple continents and traditions. After serving as assistant professor of Church history at the University of Athens (1964–1970), he moved to Scotland where he taught patristics at New College, Edinburgh (1970–1973) and then held a personal chair in systematic theology at the University of Glasgow (1973–1986). He also served as visiting professor at King's College London, and later returned to Greece as professor of dogmatics at Thessaloniki University (1986 onwards). In 1993 he was elected to the Academy of Athens, serving as its chairman in 2002. His institutional location across Orthodox and Western academic contexts shaped his theological work profoundly—he wrote from within the Eastern Orthodox tradition but with sustained engagement with Western systematic theology, ecumenical dialogue, and contemporary philosophy.
Using the Theological Traditions Reference Guide's categories, Zizioulas is best classified as Eastern Orthodox, writing within the Cappadocian patristic tradition with particular emphasis on Trinitarian theology, eucharistic ecclesiology, and the ontology of personhood. His doctoral dissertation, published in English as Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (1965), established the foundation for his ecclesiological thought by developing critically the eucharistic ecclesiology of Nikolai Afanassieff. Where Afanassieff emphasized the local eucharistic assembly as the fullest expression of the Church, Zizioulas critiqued this as insufficiently episcopal and proposed an episcopocentric understanding in which the bishop is primarily understood as president of the Divine Liturgy.
Being as Communion represents the mature synthesis of Zizioulas's patristic research, systematic theology, and ecumenical engagement. Originally published in French as L'Être ecclésial (1981) and revised for English publication in 1985, the book emerged from decades of theological reflection on the Cappadocian Fathers—particularly Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzen—and their revolutionary contribution to the understanding of personhood in Trinitarian theology. The work's ecumenical influence has been extraordinary: it has shaped Catholic ecclesiology (particularly through dialogue with Henri de Lubac), Reformed systematic theology (through engagement with Colin Gunton and Catherine LaCugna), and Anglican thought (endorsed by Rowan Williams as "a superb example of the creative use of Scripture and tradition"). French Dominican Yves Congar, one of the twentieth century's most significant Catholic theologians, described Zizioulas as "one of the most original and profound theologians of our epoch."
Readers should be aware of the distinctive Orthodox theological framework that governs this work. Orthodox theology operates with different emphases than Western Christianity: theosis (deification) rather than justification as the goal of salvation, apophatic (negative) theology alongside cataphatic (positive) claims, the centrality of the Divine Liturgy as the primary locus of theology, and the authority of the Seven Ecumenical Councils and the Greek Fathers as normative for theological reflection. Zizioulas's account of personhood, freedom, and communion is not merely an academic proposal but emerges from the lived liturgical and sacramental experience of the Orthodox Church. Western readers—particularly those from Protestant traditions—should approach the work with awareness that its epistemological foundations differ significantly from those of post-Reformation theology.
Thesis and Central Argument
Zizioulas's governing thesis is that personhood—understood as existence-in-communion rather than individual autonomy—is the fundamental category of both divine and human being, and that the Christian Church, particularly as constituted in the Eucharist, is the ecclesial and sacramental locus where authentic personhood is realized. The book responds to what Zizioulas identifies as a profound crisis in Western thought: the modern conception of the person as an autonomous individual defined by self-consciousness and rational capacity, a conception that isolates the person from community and makes freedom antithetical to relationship. Against this, Zizioulas argues that the Greek Fathers, particularly the Cappadocians, developed an ontology of personhood rooted in Trinitarian theology that understands being itself as communion—that existence is not prior to relationship but is constituted by it.
The book's proposed contribution is threefold—historical, systematic, and ecclesiological. Historically, Zizioulas argues that the Cappadocian Fathers achieved a revolutionary philosophical breakthrough by identifying God's being not with substance (ousia) but with personhood (hypostasis), specifically with the person of the Father who is the cause (aitia) of the Trinity. This move, Zizioulas contends, liberated ontology from the necessitarian thinking of Greek philosophy—in which being is conceived as eternal, unchanging substance—and grounded being in freedom, since the Father freely begets the Son and spirates the Holy Spirit in an eternal act of love rather than by natural necessity. Systematically, Zizioulas extends this Trinitarian ontology to anthropology and ecclesiology: if God exists as communion of persons, then authentic human personhood is realized only in communion, specifically in the eucharistic community where humanity participates in the divine life through the body of Christ. Ecclesiologically, Zizioulas argues that the Church is not merely an institution but a "mode of existence"—the particular way of being in which persons are constituted through baptism, sustained through the Eucharist, and ordered through the episcopate as the sacramental sign of Christ's headship.
The argument proceeds by establishing the ontological priority of personhood over substance, the inseparability of being and communion, and the eucharistic constitution of the Church as the place where these theological realities become concrete and lived.
Overview of Contents
Being as Communion is structured as seven interconnected chapters that build systematically from ontology through ecclesiology, with each chapter addressing a distinct theological locus while contributing to the book's cumulative argument. The following survey traces the logic of the argument as it develops across these chapters, identifying where the argument achieves its greatest force, where it depends on contested patristic interpretations, and where it raises questions examined in the evaluation section.
Chapter 1: Personhood and Being
The book opens with Zizioulas's most philosophically ambitious chapter, arguing that the concept of person as an ontological category—rather than a psychological or moral one—was a Christian invention unknown to Greek philosophy. Ancient Greek thought, Zizioulas argues, conceived being as substance, as eternal and unchanging essence, and understood individual existence as either an instance of universal essence (Platonism) or as particular substance (Aristotelianism). In neither case was the individual conceived as person in the sense that Christian theology would develop. The chapter traces this through Boethius's definition of person as "an individual substance of a rational nature" and shows how even this classic formulation remains trapped within substance ontology.
The breakthrough, Zizioulas argues, came with the Cappadocian Fathers who, in responding to the Trinitarian controversies of the fourth century, distinguished sharply between ousia (substance or essence) and hypostasis (person or subsistence). Where earlier theology had used these terms synonymously, the Cappadocians established that in God there is one ousia and three hypostases—one divine essence shared by three distinct persons. Critically, the person of the Father is the aitia (cause) of the Trinity: the Father eternally begets the Son and spirates the Spirit not by necessity of nature but by freedom of love. This means that personhood, not substance, is ontologically primary in God—the divine being is not a substance that subsequently exists in three persons, but three persons in eternal communion who share one divine essence.
Zizioulas then extends this to anthropology: human personhood, created in the image of the Trinitarian God, is likewise constituted not by biological individuality or psychological self-consciousness but by existence-in-communion. However, fallen humanity experiences a tragic rupture: biological existence, governed by necessity and mortality, fragments communion and reduces persons to isolated individuals struggling for survival. The restoration of authentic personhood, Zizioulas argues, occurs through ecclesial existence—through baptism into the body of Christ where biological identity is transcended and communion is reconstituted.
This chapter carries immense weight for everything that follows. Readers who find Zizioulas's reading of the Cappadocians persuasive will recognize the subsequent ecclesiology as a natural development; readers who contest his claim that the Cappadocians understood the Father as the ontological cause of the Trinity will find the entire edifice unstable.
Chapter 2: Truth and Communion
Having established personhood as ontologically prior to substance, Zizioulas turns to epistemology: how is truth known and communicated in a personalist ontology? The chapter surveys five patristic approaches to truth—the Logos approach, the Eucharistic approach, the Trinitarian approach, the apophatic approach, and the Christological approach—and demonstrates that all five understand truth not as propositional correctness or correspondence to external reality but as participation in divine life, as communion with God who is Truth.
The most significant section addresses the relationship between truth and salvation. Zizioulas argues that in patristic thought, particularly in Athanasius and Maximus the Confessor, truth is inseparable from theosis (deification). To know the truth is not merely to possess correct doctrine but to participate in the life of God through Christ in the Spirit. This has profound ecclesiological implications: the Church is the locus of truth not because it possesses authoritative doctrinal formulations but because it is the sacramental body in which believers participate in divine communion.
The chapter's conclusion addresses truth and the Church directly. Zizioulas argues that the Church as the body of Christ formed in the Spirit is the community in which truth is experienced, and that the Eucharist is the primary locus of this experience. This claim will be developed more fully in chapter four, but its foundations are laid here: truth is event, communion, participation—not merely idea or proposition.
Chapter 3: Christ, the Spirit and the Church
The third chapter addresses what Zizioulas identifies as one of the most urgent tasks facing contemporary theology: the synthesis of Christology and pneumatology in ecclesiology. Western theology, particularly in its Catholic and Protestant forms, has tended to emphasize the Christological constitution of the Church while subordinating the work of the Spirit to the application of Christ's accomplished work. Eastern theology, conversely, has sometimes emphasized pneumatology to the point of undermining Christological foundations. Zizioulas argues that both tendencies are inadequate and that the Cappadocian synthesis provides the resources for a proper integration.
The chapter's central claim is that Christ and the Spirit work inseparably but distinctly in constituting the Church. Christ is the historical person in whom divine and human nature are united; the Spirit is the eschatological presence who makes Christ's historical work a present reality and who constitutes the many as one body in Christ. Neither can be subordinated to the other: without Christ there is no content to salvation, no concrete historical mediator; without the Spirit there is no appropriation of salvation, no actualization of the body of Christ in the present. The Church, therefore, is constituted both Christologically (as the body of Christ) and pneumatologically (as the fellowship of the Spirit), and these two dimensions must be held together.
The implications for ecclesiology are substantial. A purely Christological ecclesiology tends toward hierarchical institutionalism in which the Church is understood primarily as the continuation of the incarnation through apostolic succession and sacramental hierarchy. A purely pneumatological ecclesiology tends toward charismatic individualism in which the Spirit's work bypasses institutional mediation and creates immediate access to God. The synthesis Zizioulas proposes understands the Church as both hierarchically ordered (through the episcopate as the sacramental sign of Christ's headship) and charismatically empowered (through the Spirit's distribution of gifts to all members), with the Eucharist as the event in which both dimensions are realized together.
Chapter 4: Eucharist and Catholicity
This chapter represents the heart of Zizioulas's constructive ecclesiology and is arguably the most influential section of the book for Catholic and ecumenical theology. The governing thesis is that the Eucharist is not merely one sacrament among others but is the constitutive act of the Church—the event in which the Church becomes itself as the body of Christ. Zizioulas distinguishes this position sharply from both Protestant understandings (which tend to view the Eucharist as a memorial or means of grace for already-existing believers) and Catholic understandings (which tend to view the Eucharist as a sacrament administered by the Church to its members). Against both, Zizioulas argues that the Eucharist makes the Church: there is no Church prior to or apart from the eucharistic assembly.
The chapter develops this thesis through careful analysis of early Christian eucharistic practice, particularly in Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus. Zizioulas demonstrates that for these writers, the eucharistic assembly was understood as the full manifestation of the Church—each local eucharistic community, gathered around the bishop, was the catholic Church in that place, not a fragment of a larger ecclesial whole. This understanding, Zizioulas argues, challenges both congregationalist ecclesiologies (which see each congregation as autonomous) and universalist ecclesiologies (which see the universal Church as a superstructure over local churches). Instead, the local eucharistic community is catholic precisely because it is the body of Christ in that place, and the universal Church is nothing other than the communion of local eucharistic assemblies.
The chapter's most contested claim is its account of the bishop's role. Zizioulas argues that the bishop is not primarily an administrative officer or teaching authority but is the president of the Eucharist, and that episcopal succession is not a linear chain of ordination stretching back to the apostles but is the succession of bishops in the local eucharistic assembly. This has profound ecumenical implications, particularly for Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, and has generated substantial debate both within Orthodoxy and in Western theology.
Chapter 5: Apostolic Continuity and Succession
Building on the eucharistic ecclesiology of chapter four, Zizioulas addresses the question of apostolic continuity—how the Church remains faithful to the apostolic witness across time. The chapter distinguishes between two approaches to apostolicity: the "historical" approach, which emphasizes linear succession of ordained ministers from the apostles, and the "eschatological" approach, which emphasizes the Spirit's ongoing presence in the community. Western theology, particularly Catholicism, has tended to emphasize the historical dimension; Eastern theology, particularly in some charismatic movements, has emphasized the eschatological. Zizioulas argues for a synthesis.
Apostolic succession, Zizioulas contends, is not merely a historical chain but is an eschatological reality constituted in the eucharistic assembly. The bishop succeeds the apostles not merely by being ordained in a line stretching back to them but by presiding over the eucharistic community in which the apostolic faith is confessed and lived. This means that apostolic succession is inseparable from eucharistic communion: to be in apostolic succession is to be in communion with the apostolic faith as it is expressed in the eucharistic assembly.
The implications are both conservative and radical. Conservative, because Zizioulas affirms the necessity of episcopal succession and rejects congregationalist models that dispense with bishops. Radical, because he grounds that succession not in juridical authority but in eucharistic communion, which means that a bishop who is not in communion with the apostolic faith—even if validly ordained—is not truly in apostolic succession.
Chapter 6: Ministry and Communion
The sixth chapter extends the eucharistic ecclesiology to the question of ordained ministry. Zizioulas argues that ministry is not primarily functional (a set of tasks to be performed) but relational (a set of relationships constituted in the eucharistic assembly). The bishop, presbyters, and deacons are not merely officers who perform certain duties but are persons whose identity is constituted by their relationships within the eucharistic community.
This has several implications. First, there is no ministry apart from community—ordination is not the conferral of individual powers but is incorporation into a web of relationships within the body of Christ. Second, ministry is inherently diverse—the Spirit distributes different gifts to different members, and the ordained ministry exists not to monopolize these gifts but to order them for the building up of the body. Third, ministry is sacramental—it makes visible and effective the headship of Christ over his body, particularly through the bishop's presidency at the Eucharist.
The chapter addresses the question of "validity" of ministry—whether non-episcopal churches possess valid sacraments and ordained ministry. Zizioulas's answer is characteristically nuanced: he affirms the necessity of episcopal ordination while refusing to deny the work of the Spirit in non-episcopal communions. The question of validity, he suggests, is not primarily juridical but eschatological: it will be answered definitively only at the eschaton when Christ's body is fully revealed.
Chapter 7: The Local Church in a Perspective of Communion
The final chapter addresses one of the most contentious questions in contemporary ecclesiology: the relationship between local and universal Church. This question became acute in late twentieth-century Catholic theology through the Ratzinger-Kasper debate, in which Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) argued for the ontological and temporal priority of the universal Church over local churches, while Cardinal Walter Kasper argued for the simultaneity and mutual inherence of local and universal. Zizioulas's position, developed independently of this debate but later drawn into it, affirms the simultaneity: the local eucharistic assembly is fully Church, not a part of the Church, and the universal Church is nothing other than the communion of local churches.
The chapter develops this through careful attention to eucharistic practice. When the local community gathers for the Eucharist, it is not celebrating a partial or fragmentary reality but is experiencing the fullness of Christ's body. At the same time, this fullness is experienced in communion with all other local eucharistic assemblies who confess the same apostolic faith. The universal Church, therefore, is not a superstructure but is the network of communion among local churches.
This position has significant ecumenical implications, particularly for questions of primacy and authority. If the local church is fully Church, what is the role of primatial sees like Rome or Constantinople? Zizioulas's answer is that primacy is a service of communion—the primatial bishop facilitates and expresses the communion among local churches but does not govern them as parts of a juridical whole. This position resonates with Orthodox ecclesiology but has proven controversial in both Catholic and Protestant contexts.
Theological Evaluation and Critique
Exegetical and Hermeneutical Method
Zizioulas's exegetical method is distinctively patristic rather than biblical-critical. The book contains surprisingly little direct engagement with biblical texts; instead, it operates with a hermeneutical assumption that the Greek Fathers—particularly the Cappadocians—provide the authoritative lens through which Scripture is rightly understood. This is not biblical indifference but reflects the Orthodox conviction that Scripture and Tradition are inseparable, that the same Spirit who inspired Scripture also guided the Fathers in its interpretation, and that the ecumenical councils and patristic consensus provide the hermeneutical framework within which Scripture speaks authoritatively.
The strength of this approach is its theological depth and coherence. Zizioulas reads the Fathers not merely as historical sources to be analyzed critically but as living witnesses to the apostolic faith whose insights remain normative for contemporary theology. His analysis of the Cappadocian distinction between ousia and hypostasis is philologically sophisticated and theologically generative, and his demonstration that the Fathers understood personhood as ontologically constitutive rather than psychologically derivative represents a genuine contribution to patristic scholarship.
The weakness, particularly from a Protestant perspective, is the relative absence of direct biblical argument. When Zizioulas makes claims about the Eucharist as constitutive of the Church, or about the bishop as necessary president of the eucharistic assembly, he appeals primarily to Ignatius, Irenaeus, and the patristic consensus rather than to direct exegesis of New Testament texts. Protestant readers will want to press whether these patristic developments represent faithful unfolding of biblical ecclesiology or represent accretions that should be tested against Scripture alone. The book does not provide resources for that conversation because it operates within a different epistemological framework.
The most significant hermeneutical tension concerns Zizioulas's reading of the Cappadocians' doctrine of the Father as aitia of the Trinity. Zizioulas argues that the Cappadocians made the person of the Father, not the divine essence, ontologically ultimate—that the Father is the "cause" of the Son and Spirit not by necessity of nature but by freedom of personhood. This reading has generated substantial scholarly debate. Some patristic scholars, including several contributors to Douglas Knight's The Theology of John Zizioulas, have argued that Zizioulas overstates the Cappadocians' commitment to the Father's causal priority and that Basil and the Gregories maintained a stronger account of the divine essence as co-equal with the three persons. Others, particularly Colin Gunton, have pressed whether locating ultimate ontological reality in the person of the Father risks subordinating the Son and Spirit, creating a functional subordinationism even while maintaining formal commitment to Trinitarian equality.
Doctrinal Analysis
Measured against the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed (381) and the Chalcedonian Definition (451), Being as Communion raises no concerns at the level of ecumenical orthodoxy. Zizioulas explicitly affirms the homoousion (consubstantiality) of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the full divinity and full humanity of Christ without mixture or confusion, and the authority of the Seven Ecumenical Councils. His commitment to Nicene and Chalcedonian orthodoxy is stated clearly and maintained consistently throughout.
The doctrinal questions the book raises emerge at the confessional and ecclesiological level, and they vary significantly across the Christian traditions most likely to engage it.
From a Reformed perspective, Zizioulas's ecclesiology represents both a profound challenge and a potential resource. Reformed theology has historically emphasized the Word preached and the sacraments rightly administered as the marks of the true Church, and has been suspicious of any ecclesiology that appears to locate the Church's reality in institutional structures rather than in God's sovereign activity. Zizioulas's claim that the Eucharist makes the Church—that there is no Church prior to or apart from the eucharistic assembly—will strike many Reformed readers as sacramentalism that compromises divine sovereignty.
However, Reformed readers influenced by recent Trinitarian theology, particularly through the work of Colin Gunton and others in the Scottish tradition where Zizioulas taught, will recognize resonances with their own emphasis on the Church as communion and the Spirit's role in constituting the body of Christ. Gunton himself engaged Zizioulas extensively and found his personalist ontology illuminating for Reformed systematic theology, even while pressing for greater emphasis on particularity alongside communion. Reformed readers will want to assess whether Zizioulas's account of the bishop's presidency at the Eucharist can be reconciled with presbyterian polity, or whether his argument requires accepting episcopal succession as theologically necessary rather than merely historically conditioned.
From a Roman Catholic perspective, the book has been profoundly influential and has generated substantial ecumenical dialogue. Catholic theologians including Henri de Lubac, Yves Congar, and Cardinal Walter Kasper have engaged Zizioulas's eucharistic ecclesiology appreciatively, finding in it resources for renewing Catholic understanding of the relationship between local and universal Church. The Second Vatican Council's Lumen Gentium (1964) affirmed that the Church subsists in local churches, not merely that local churches participate in a universal ecclesial reality, and Zizioulas's work has been read as providing patristic grounding for this conciliar teaching.
The most significant area of theological tension concerns papal primacy and jurisdiction. Zizioulas affirms that primacy serves communion but insists that it does not confer juridical authority over local churches. This position is compatible with Orthodox ecclesiology but stands in tension with the Catholic doctrine of universal ordinary jurisdiction taught at Vatican I (1870) and reaffirmed in Lumen Gentium §22. Catholic readers shaped by Pastor Aeternus will find Zizioulas's account of primacy inadequate; those influenced by the nouvelle théologie and ressourcement movements will find it a compelling alternative to juridical models of papal authority.
From a Wesleyan-Arminian perspective, Zizioulas's emphasis on the Spirit's work in constituting the Church and distributing gifts to all members resonates with Methodist commitments to the priesthood of all believers and the universality of grace. John Wesley's own emphasis on communion—both with God and among believers—as constitutive of Christian existence finds patristic grounding in Zizioulas's work. However, Methodist readers shaped by connectionalism rather than episcopacy will question whether Zizioulas's account of the bishop's essential role in constituting the eucharistic community can accommodate Methodist polity, or whether it requires accepting a more hierarchical ecclesiology than the Wesleyan tradition has maintained.
From a Baptist and Free Church perspective, the book's most significant challenge is its sacramental realism and its account of the bishop's necessity. Baptist ecclesiology has traditionally emphasized the autonomy of the local congregation and has been suspicious of hierarchical structures that appear to mediate between believers and Christ. Zizioulas's claim that the Church is constituted by the Eucharist presided over by a bishop in apostolic succession represents a fundamental challenge to congregationalist polity. Baptist readers will need to assess whether their tradition's emphasis on local church autonomy can be reconciled with Zizioulas's communion ecclesiology, or whether accepting his argument requires abandoning congregationalism.
From an Eastern Orthodox perspective—Zizioulas's own tradition—the book has generated both enthusiastic reception and significant internal critique. Many Orthodox theologians have found in Zizioulas a compelling contemporary articulation of patristic ecclesiology that speaks effectively to Western theological concerns. Others, particularly Anglophone Orthodox theologians represented in Alan Brown's essay in Douglas Knight's volume, have questioned whether Zizioulas's engagement with Western philosophy (particularly Heidegger and Levinas) and his ecumenical commitments have led him to compromise distinctively Orthodox theological emphases. Some have pressed whether his account of the person risks importing Western individualism into Orthodox theology, while others have questioned whether his emphasis on freedom adequately accounts for the role of divine essence in patristic Trinitarianism.
Engagement with Secondary Literature
The secondary literature engagement in Being as Communion is comprehensive within its chosen frame but narrow in what it excludes. Zizioulas demonstrates mastery of the Greek patristic tradition, particularly the Cappadocian Fathers, Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus, Athanasius, and Maximus the Confessor. His reading of these sources is philologically sophisticated and theologically penetrating. He also engages selectively with Western systematic theology, particularly Karl Barth and Karl Rahner, and with contemporary philosophy, particularly Martin Heidegger and Emmanuel Levinas.
The most significant gaps are threefold. First, Zizioulas underengages the Latin patristic tradition. Augustine receives minimal attention, and when he is discussed it is primarily to contrast his substance-oriented ontology with the Cappadocians' person-oriented approach. This creates the impression—almost certainly unintended—that Western theology from Augustine onward represents a departure from authentic Christianity rather than a legitimate development of the tradition. A more balanced treatment would have engaged Augustine's Trinitarian theology more substantively and assessed whether the divergence between East and West is as stark as Zizioulas sometimes suggests.
Second, the book does not engage Protestant Reformation theology in any depth. Luther, Calvin, and the magisterial Reformers are absent, and when Protestantism is referenced it is primarily through twentieth-century figures like Barth. This means that the book does not directly address the Protestant concern that patristic developments, particularly regarding episcopal succession and sacramental theology, represent departures from biblical ecclesiology. For Protestant readers to engage Zizioulas's argument fairly, they need to see him address their tradition's critiques of early Catholic ecclesiology, and the book does not provide that.
Third, the biblical scholarship of the past century receives minimal engagement. Zizioulas operates with the assumption that patristic exegesis is authoritative, but he does not defend this assumption against the historical-critical method that dominates contemporary biblical studies. Protestant readers shaped by grammatical-historical exegesis will want to see Zizioulas engage New Testament scholarship on early Christian ecclesiology—works by Raymond Brown, Ernst Käsemann, and others who have argued that early Christian church structures were diverse and fluid rather than uniformly episcopal. The absence of this engagement makes the book less persuasive for readers who do not share Zizioulas's epistemological commitments.
Strengths
The ontology of personhood. The book's most significant contribution is its recovery of the patristic insight that personhood is ontologically constitutive, not psychologically derivative. In modern Western thought, personhood is typically understood as a property of individuals—rational capacity, self-consciousness, moral agency—rather than as a mode of being. Zizioulas demonstrates that the Cappadocian Fathers developed a radically different understanding in which the person is not an individual possessing certain properties but is a hypostasis constituted through relationships. This has profound implications not merely for theology but for philosophy, ethics, and social thought. Feminist theologians, communitarians, and critics of liberal individualism have found in Zizioulas resources for thinking about personhood beyond the autonomous self.
Eucharistic ecclesiology. The book's second major contribution is its articulation of a thoroughly eucharistic ecclesiology that centers the Church's identity in the liturgical assembly rather than in juridical structures or doctrinal formulations. This represents a significant challenge to both Catholic institutionalism and Protestant voluntarism. Against Catholic tendencies to identify the Church with its hierarchical structures, Zizioulas insists that the Church is event—the gathering of the community in the Spirit around Christ present in the Eucharist. Against Protestant tendencies to reduce the Church to the aggregate of individual believers, Zizioulas insists that the Church constitutes believers, not the reverse. The eucharistic assembly is not something that already-existing Christians do; it is the event in which Christians are made.
Ecumenical bridge-building. The book's third major contribution is its capacity to serve as a bridge between Eastern and Western theology. Zizioulas writes from within Orthodoxy but with sustained engagement with Catholic and Protestant thought, and his work has been received appreciatively across confessional lines. Catholic theologians have found in his eucharistic ecclesiology resources for renewing Vatican II's vision of the Church as communion. Reformed theologians have found in his Trinitarian personalism resources for articulating a relational ontology consistent with covenantal theology. The book demonstrates that Orthodox theology is not merely archaic traditionalism but is capable of addressing contemporary theological questions with creativity and rigor.
Liturgical grounding. The book's fourth strength is its refusal to separate theology from liturgy. For Zizioulas, the Divine Liturgy is not merely the context where theology is applied but is the primary locus where theology is done. The Church's faith is not first articulated in doctrinal propositions and then celebrated in worship; rather, the faith is lived and expressed in the liturgical assembly, and doctrinal formulations arise from that lived experience. This emphasis resonates with the liturgical renewal movements that have shaped Catholic, Anglican, and mainline Protestant theology over the past century, and it provides resources for resisting the rationalism and propositionalism that have sometimes characterized evangelical theology.
Weaknesses and Limitations
The claim that personhood is ontologically ultimate is insufficiently defended. Zizioulas's central thesis—that the person of the Father is the ontological cause of the Trinity, and that personhood therefore takes precedence over substance—depends on a particular reading of the Cappadocian Fathers that is contested among patristic scholars. Zizioulas presents this reading as straightforwardly representative of patristic consensus, but the reality is more complex. Basil's Adversus Eunomium and Gregory of Nyssa's Ad Ablabium can be read as affirming the equal ultimacy of divine essence and divine persons, not as subordinating essence to personhood. Zizioulas's reading is defensible, but it is not the only defensible reading, and he does not adequately acknowledge or address alternative interpretations.
The most significant critique on this point comes from Colin Gunton, who argues that Zizioulas's emphasis on communion risks dissolving persons into their relationships and neglecting the particularity that is essential to personhood. Gunton proposes "unity-in-particularity" as a more adequate Trinitarian account, in which persons are both constituted by their relations and possess irreducible particularity. This is not a minor quibble but touches the heart of Zizioulas's project: if personhood is exhausted by communion, can genuine otherness and freedom be preserved? Zizioulas addresses this concern in his later work Communion and Otherness (2006), but the absence of sustained treatment in Being as Communion is a significant limitation.
The account of the bishop's role is historically and theologically contested. Zizioulas argues that the monepiscopate (single bishop presiding over the local church) was normative from the earliest Christian communities and that episcopal succession is essential to apostolic continuity. This claim is historically debatable. New Testament scholarship has demonstrated considerable diversity in early Christian church structures, with presbyteral leadership, charismatic prophets, and itinerant apostles all playing significant roles in different communities. The monepiscopate as Ignatius describes it in the early second century was not universal, and the question of how and when it became normative is complex.
Zizioulas's account also raises theological questions. If the bishop is essential to the Church's being, what is the ecclesial status of non-episcopal communities? Zizioulas's answer—that the question is eschatological rather than juridical—is pastorally sensitive but theologically underdeveloped. Protestant readers who affirm the validity of non-episcopal churches will want a more substantive account of how the Spirit works in their communities if episcopal succession is theologically necessary rather than merely historically conditioned.
The book underengages biblical ecclesiology. The most significant methodological limitation is the relative absence of direct biblical argument. Zizioulas operates with the assumption that patristic interpretation is authoritative, and he does not defend this assumption against the Protestant principle of sola scriptura or against the historical-critical method's claim that Scripture should be read in its original historical context before patristic developments. For readers who do not share Zizioulas's epistemological commitments—who do not grant the Fathers the same authority Zizioulas does—the argument will be unpersuasive precisely at the points where it is most innovative.
A more robust engagement with New Testament texts on ecclesiology—particularly Paul's letters and Acts—would strengthen the book significantly. When Zizioulas makes claims about the Eucharist or the bishop, Protestant readers will ask: where is this in Scripture? The book does not provide satisfying answers to this question because it does not frame the conversation in those terms.
Engagement with the Broader Scholarly Conversation
Being as Communion enters a field that was significantly reshaped in the mid-twentieth century by the nouvelle théologie and ressourcement movements in Catholic theology and by the Neo-Patristic synthesis in Orthodox theology. The book's most important Catholic dialogue partner is Henri de Lubac, whose Catholicism (1938) and The Motherhood of the Church (1971) developed a communion ecclesiology that anticipates and complements Zizioulas's work. Paul McPartlan's The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John Zizioulas in Dialogue (1993) demonstrates the profound convergence between these two theologians despite their confessional differences. Both emphasize the Eucharist as constitutive of the Church, both challenge juridical models of ecclesiology, and both ground ecclesiology in Trinitarian communion.
The book's most important Protestant dialogue partner is Colin Gunton, whose The Promise of Trinitarian Theology(1991) and The One, the Three and the Many (1993) engage Zizioulas extensively. Gunton appreciates Zizioulas's personalist ontology and finds in it resources for Reformed systematic theology, but he presses Zizioulas on the question of particularity: does communion exhaust personhood, or is there an irreducible particularity that persists even in perfect communion? Gunton's critique has been developed further by Douglas Farrow and others in Douglas Knight's edited volume The Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (2007), which remains the most comprehensive critical engagement with Zizioulas's work.
Within Orthodox theology, Zizioulas's work builds on and extends Nikolai Afanassieff's eucharistic ecclesiology while critiquing it as insufficiently episcopal. Afanassieff's The Church of the Holy Spirit (1971, English translation) emphasized the local eucharistic assembly as the fullest expression of the Church but was criticized by some Orthodox theologians as too congregational. Zizioulas's correction—insisting on the bishop as essential president of the Eucharist—represents an attempt to preserve Afanassieff's eucharistic focus while maintaining episcopal structure.
The book also engages—though less directly—with contemporary philosophical personalism, particularly through Emmanuel Levinas's phenomenology of the Other and Martin Heidegger's existential analytics. Zizioulas finds in Levinas resources for thinking about otherness and encounter, and in Heidegger the language of ekstasis (standing outside oneself) that he uses to describe personhood as fundamentally oriented beyond itself. However, he also insists that Christian theology surpasses philosophical personalism by grounding personhood in the Trinitarian God rather than in human experience alone.
The ecumenical significance of the book is perhaps best seen in its influence on the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue and on the Ratzinger-Kasper debate regarding local and universal Church. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (later Pope Benedict XVI) argued for the ontological and temporal priority of the universal Church, while Cardinal Walter Kasper argued for simultaneity. Zizioulas's position—that local and universal Church are simultaneous and mutually constitutive—was drawn into this debate, and both Ratzinger and Kasper engaged his work in their respective arguments. This demonstrates that Orthodox theology is not merely a museum piece but is actively shaping contemporary Catholic ecclesiology.
Conclusion and Recommendation
Being as Communion is a work of exceptional theological depth, patristic scholarship, and ecumenical significance—a retrieval of the Cappadocian tradition's revolutionary personalist ontology that challenges both Catholic institutionalism and Protestant individualism while providing resources for renewing ecclesiology across confessional lines. Zizioulas's central contributions—his articulation of personhood as ontologically constitutive rather than psychologically derivative, his thoroughly eucharistic ecclesiology, and his capacity to bridge Eastern and Western theological traditions—have made the book essential reading for systematic theologians, ecclesiologists, and ecumenists for nearly four decades.
The book's weaknesses, however, are substantial and consequential for readers from particular theological traditions. The claim that the person of the Father is ontologically ultimate in the Trinity depends on a contested reading of the Cappadocians. The account of episcopal succession as theologically necessary rather than historically conditioned is both historically debatable and insufficiently grounded in direct biblical argument. The relative absence of engagement with Protestant Reformation theology and contemporary biblical scholarship limits the book's persuasiveness for readers who do not share Zizioulas's epistemological commitments to patristic authority. And the question of whether communion exhausts personhood or whether irreducible particularity persists alongside relationship—pressed most forcefully by Colin Gunton—deserves more sustained treatment than Zizioulas provides here.
Read with awareness of these limitations, supplemented by the critical engagement in Douglas Knight's The Theology of John Zizioulas, and measured against one's own confessional tradition's ecclesiological commitments, Being as Communion is a work that demands and rewards serious engagement. It will not satisfy all readers—Zizioulas himself acknowledges that his proposals are offered as contributions to ongoing conversation rather than as definitive settlements—but for those willing to think with and against the patristic tradition, the book opens vistas of theological insight that few contemporary works can match.
Recommended for: Graduate students in systematic theology, ecclesiology, and patristic studies; pastors and theologians engaged in ecumenical dialogue, particularly Catholic-Orthodox conversations; scholars working on Trinitarian theology, personhood, or communion ecclesiology; readers from liturgical traditions (Orthodox, Catholic, Anglican, Lutheran) seeking deeper theological grounding for sacramental practice; anyone dissatisfied with both institutional and individualistic models of the Church and seeking a third way rooted in patristic ressourcement.
Not recommended for: Readers seeking an introductory treatment of ecclesiology (Zizioulas assumes substantial theological background); those from strongly congregationalist or Free Church traditions unwilling to consider episcopal models of church order; readers who require sustained biblical-theological argument before accepting patristic developments (the book assumes patristic authority rather than defending it); those unfamiliar with Orthodox liturgical and theological tradition (the book's epistemological commitments will seem alien without that context); readers who have not yet engaged the broader conversation represented by Henri de Lubac, Colin Gunton, and the Catholic-Orthodox dialogue, and therefore lack the context needed to evaluate Zizioulas's distinctive contribution.
Overall Assessment: ☑ Highly Recommended | ☐ Recommended | ☐ Recommended with Reservations | ☐ Not Recommended
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