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Holy love and divine aseity in the theology of John Zizioulas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2008
Abstract
John Zizioulas's doctrine of the Trinity emphasises both the holy love and the transcendent sovereignty of God. I believe that he offers a major contribution to contemporary theology. Although it is part of the tradition of Western theology, Zizioulas's ‘Being as Communion’ thesis has too often been underappreciated and sometimes even marginalised. On the other hand, recent theology has made much of the love of God, but often this has come with a corresponding and unfortunate loss of recognition of divine holiness, transcendence and freedom. Zizioulas may help us keep both the love and the holiness of the triune God in perspective. Unfortunately, however, Zizioulas's own way of doing this is fraught with problems. In this essay I try to shed light on two major themes in his trinitarian theology. One – what I call the Sovereignty-Aseity Conviction – appears at base to be an existentialist thesis: the existence of the Father precedes the divine essence. The other – what I refer to as the Being as Communion thesis – is an essentialist thesis: the holy love shared in the perichoretic life of the triune God is ‘constitutive of his substance’. I argue that Zizioulas's ascription of the first to the Father alone is problematic, and I argue further that these two theses do not work well together. I conclude by suggesting that Zizioulas's theology needs revision if it is to be truly helpful.
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References
1 E.g. Volf, Miroslav, After our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998)Google Scholar and LaCugna, Catherine Mowry, God for us: The Trinity and Christian Life (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1991)Google Scholar.
2 E.g. Lucian Turcescu, ‘“Person” Versus “Individual”, and other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa’, Modern Theology (2002), pp. 527–639; see also his very helpful explication of Gregory of Nyssa in his Gregory of Nyssa and the Concept of Divine Persons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005); and the response to Turcescu's criticisms by Aristotle Papanikolaou, ‘Is John Zizioulas an Existentialist in Disguise: Response to Lucian Turcescu’, Modern Theology (2004), pp. 601–7.
3 On the SAC in the thought of Aquinas, see Plantinga, Alvin, Does God have a Nature? (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; see also Richards, Jay Wesley, The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity, and Immutability (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003)Google Scholar.
4 Zizioulas, John D., Being as Communion, (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985), p. 16Google Scholar.
5 Ibid., p. 17.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid. Does this entail the logic of relative identity? For a careful and elegant defence of the doctrine of the Trinity employing the logic of relative identity, see Van Inwagen, Peter, ‘And Yet They are Not Three Gods But One God’, in Morris, Thomas V. (ed.), Philosophy and the Christian Faith (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1988), pp. 241–78Google Scholar; see also the helpful discussion by Michael C. Rea, ‘Relative Identity and the Doctrine of the Trinity’, Philosophia Christi (2003), pp. 431–45.
8 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 16, 84.
9 Ibid., p. 16, cf. p. 84.
10 Ibid., p. 84.
11 Ibid., pp. 83–8.
12 Ibid., p. 18.
13 By ‘Homoian Arianism’ I mean the theology set forth and defended by such theologians as Akakius of Caesarea, Eudoxius, Valens of Mursa, Ursacius of Singidunum, Ulfilas, Palladius and Germinius of Sirmium, and enshrined in Second Creed of Sirmium (357) and the Creed of Nike (360). See Hanson, R. P. C., The Search for the Christian Doctrine of God: The Arian Controversy 318–382 AD (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988), pp. 579–97Google Scholar. Daniel H. Williams argues that Germinius does not fit Hanson's neat categorisation, ‘Another Exception to Fourth-Century “Arian” Typologies: The Case of Germinius of Sirmium’, Journal of Early Christian Studies (1996), pp. 335–57.
14 Examples of theological opposition to ‘ontotheology’ abound; surely among the most important are Jean-Luc Marion, e.g. God Without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991) and Milbank, John, e.g. The Word Made Strange (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997)Google Scholar; ‘Only Theology Overcomes Metaphysics’, New Blackfriars (1995), pp. 325–42. James K. A. Smith notes that Milbank extends Marion's critique of Scotus; where Marion recognises ‘Scotus’ idolatry with respect to God but fails to acknowledge Scotus' idolatry toward creatures', Milbank has no such failure, Introducing Radical Orthodoxy: Mapping a Post-Secular Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004), p. 98. For a quite different reading of Zizioulas, see Wayne Hankey, ‘Theoria Versus Poesis: Neoplatonism and Trinitarian Difference in Aquinas, John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion, and John Zizioulas’, Modern Theology (1999), pp. 387–415.
15 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 46.
16 Ibid.
17 Ibid., p. 106.
18 Ibid., p. 44.
19 Ibid., p. 18.
20 Ibid.
21 Ibid., p. 17.
22 Ibid., p. 18.
23 Ibid. I take Zizioulas to mean ‘the Trinity’ when he refers to ‘God’ here.
24 Ibid.
25 Ibid., p. 39.
26 James K. Beilby's argues that loss of ‘libertarian’ divine freedom compromises divine aseity, ‘Divine Aseity, Divine Freedom: A Conceptual Problem for Edwardsian-Calvinism’, Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society (2004), pp. 647–58.
27 For discussion of this, see Richards, Jay Wesley, The Untamed God: A Philosophical Exploration of Divine Perfection, Simplicity and Immutability (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2003), pp. 33–4Google Scholar, and Plantinga, , Does God have a Nature? (Milwaukee, WI: Marquette University Press, 1980), pp. 34–5Google Scholar. Of course their contexts are very different: Richards addresses Barth and Hartshorne while Plantinga treats Aquinas' doctrine of divine simplicity.
28 Richards, Untamed God, p. 33.
29 Robert D. Turner, ‘Foundations for John Zizioulas' Approach to Ecclesial Communion’, Ephemerides Theologicae Lovanienses (2002), p. 440.
30 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 42.
31 I am not saying that Zizioulas merely baptises Heidegger (either by sprinkling or immersion), nor do I mean to imply that he adopts Heideggerian thought uncritically. On the contrary, Zizioulas offers several criticisms of the attempt of Christos Yannaras to find ‘philosophical justification’ of Greek patristic theology in the thought of Heidegger: ibid., p. 45 n. 40.
32 See Heidegger, Martin, Being and Time, trans. Stambaugh, Joan (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1996), esp. pp. 164–8Google Scholar.
33 See Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, II/1 (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1957)Google Scholar.
34 On Barth's ‘actualism’ see Hunsinger, George, How to Read Karl Barth: The Shape of his Theology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991)Google Scholar.
35 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 45 n. 40. Here Zizioulas also criticises Rahner's introduction of the divine economy and revelation into the ‘ontological structure of the theology of the Holy Trinity’.
36 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 83.
37 Ibid.
38 Ibid., p. 89.
39 Ibid., p. 39; cf. his criticisms of Origen's doctrine of eternal creation, p. 75.
40 Ibid., p. 39.
41 Ibid.
42 Ibid., p. 41.
43 Ibid.
44 Ibid., p. 17.
45 Ibid., p. 46.
46 Torrance, Alan J., Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human Participation, with special reference to Volume One of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), pp. 292–3Google Scholar.
47 Further concerns regarding omniscience could be raised as well: would the Father's knowledge of his own actions ‘throw’ him as well? Thanks to Randal Rauser for discussion of this issue.
48 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, p. 89.
49 Ibid.
50 Recall Zizioulas's criticisms of Rahner on this account; for Zizioulas the ontological Trinity is not to be reduced to the economy of salvation.
51 See Morris, Thomas V., The Logic of God Incarnate (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 38–41Google Scholar. Graeme Forbes puts this with more precision when he states that ‘an individual essence of an object x is set of properties I which satisfies the following two conditions: every property P in I is an essential property of x, and it is not possible that some object y distinct from x has every member of I’. The Metaphysics of Modality (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985), p. 99.
52 On the renaissance of interest in and defence of essentialism in recent analytic philosophy (and the move from modal logic to the metaphysics of modality more generally), cf. Loux, Michael J., ‘Introduction: Modality and Metaphysics’, in Loux, (ed.), The Possible and the Actual (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), pp. 15–64Google Scholar. Major works include Plantinga, Alvin, The Nature of Necessity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; Wiggins, David, Sameness and Substance (Oxford: Blackwell, 1980)Google Scholar and Kripke, Saul, Naming and Necessity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. A well-known recent example of essentialism applied to controversial theological issues is Thomas V. Morris, The Logic of God Incarnate.
53 More precisely, U must be true in every possible world in which the Father has existence. But for Zizioulas's theology, the Father must exist in all possible worlds (at least long enough to be able to will himself out of existence), so this detail need not detain us here.
54 On this distinction see Alvin Plantinga, ‘De Re et De Dicto’, Nous (1969), pp. 235–58.
55 For helpful discussions of Neo-Arianism, cf. Hanson, Search for Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 598–636; cf. also Vaggione, Richard Paul, Eunomius of Cyzicus and the Nicene Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)Google Scholar; Michael E. Butler, ‘Neo-Arianism: Its Antecedents and Tenets’, St. Vladimirs Theological Quarterly (1992), pp. 355–71; Graham A. Keith, ‘Our Knowledge of God: The Relevance of the Debate Between Eunomius and the Cappadocians’, Tyndale Bulletin (1990), pp. 60–88; and Kopacek, Thomas A., A History of Neo-Arianism, vol. 2 (Cambridge, MA: Philadelphia Patristic Foundation, 1979)Google Scholar.
56 Thomas V. Morris appears to equate individual-essences and hacceities, Logic of God Incarnate, p. 38.
57 Cornelius Plantinga, Jr., ‘Social Trinity and Tritheism’, in Feenstra, Ronald J. and Plantinga, Cornelius Jr., (eds), Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), pp. 21–47Google Scholar.
58 Zizioulas, Being as Communion, pp. 17, 18.
59 Ibid., p. 46.
60 Ibid., p. 18.
61 Zizioulas, John D., ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution’, in Schwobel, Christoph (ed.), Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Act and Being (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), p. 48Google Scholar. Zizioulas's position in this essay seems to be very close to what I would want to propose, which raises the question of how well it fits with what he says in Being as Communion.