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‘Person’ and ‘Being’ in John Zizioulas' Trinitarian Theology: Conversations with Thomas Torrance and Thomas Aquinas

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Ralph Del Colle
Ralph Del Colle
Affiliation:
Marquette UniversityDepartment of Theology Couglin Hall 100 PO Box 1881 Milwaukee, Wisconsin 53201–1881 Email: Ralph.DelColle@marquette. edu
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Extract

The 318 Fathers at the First Council of Nicaea (325) began their profession of faith in the second article of the creed as follows:

Confessing that: We believe in one God … And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father as only begotten, that is, from the essence of the Father, [ek tes ousias tou patros].

Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 54 , Issue 1 , February 2001 , pp. 70 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 2001

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References

1 Zizioulas, John D., ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution’, in Schwōbel, Christoph (ed.), Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays on Divine Being and Act (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1995), pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

2 Torrance, Thomas F., The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996), p. 141.Google Scholar

3 Torrance, Thomas F., The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988).Google Scholar

4 Zizioulas, John D., Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985).Google Scholar

5 Torrance, Alan J., Persons in Communion: Trinitarian Description and Human Participation (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1996).Google Scholar

6 Zizioulas, John D., ‘On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood’, in Schwōbel, Christoph and Gunton, Colin (eds), Persons, Divine and Human (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1991), p. 40.Google Scholar

7 Zizioulas, ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution’, p. 52.

8 Ibid.

9 Torrance, , The Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 116, 124.Google Scholar

10 von Harnack, Adolph, History of Dogma: Vol. IV. Translated by Buchanan, Neil (New York: Dove, 1900, 1961), p. 352.Google Scholar

11 Zizioulas, , Being as Communion, p. 39.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., p. 107.

13 Zizioulas, , ‘On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood’, p. 43.Google Scholar

14 Zizioulas, , Being as Communion, p. 53.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 106.

16 Zizioulas, , ‘On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood’, p. 46.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., p. 45.

18 Quoted in Torrance, Thomas F., The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 179.Google Scholar

19 Zizioulas, , ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution’, pp. 51–52.Google Scholar

20 See, for example, Egan, John P. SJ, ‘Primal Cause and Trinitarian Perichoresis in Gregory Nazianzen's Oration 31.14’, Studia Patristica 27 (1991) 21–28Google Scholar. Also, Meijering, E. P., ‘The Doctrine of the Will and of the Trinity in the Orations of Gregory of Nazianzus’, Nederlands Theologisch Tijdschritt 27 (1973) 224–234Google Scholar. Meijereng's concluding sentence is quite interesting to say the least: ‘In our time when there are “theologians” who want to make us believe that God is dead, but that Jesus is alive, Gregory's insistence that the Father is the [aitia] (or [pete]) of the Son and as such more than the Son, could remind us that “faith in Jesus” does not mean that we believe that Jesus is (our) God, but that we believe that the living God is the subject of the words and acts of Jesus of Nazareth’, p. 234.

21 Torrance, , The Trinitarian Faith: The Evangelical Theology of the Ancient Catholic Church, pp. 302–340. Also, The Christian Doctrine of God, pp. 175–85.Google Scholar

22 Zizioulas, , ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution’, p. 50.Google Scholar

23 Torrance, . The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 212.Google Scholar

24 Zizioulas, , Being as Communion, p. 134.Google Scholar

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., p. 44.

27 Zizioulas, , ‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian Contribution’, p. 59.Google Scholar

28 Torrance, Alan, Persons in Communion, p. 300.Google Scholar

29 Ibid., p. 289.

30 Thomas F. Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 124.

31 Ibid., p. 131.

32 Ibid., p. 124.

33 Zizioulas, , Being as Communion, p. 88.Google Scholar

34 Torrance, Thomas F., The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 133.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., p. 171.

36 Zizioulas, , Being as Communion, p. 41.Google Scholar

37 The monarchia or the Monas is essentially and intrinsically trinitarian in the inner relations of God's eternal Ousia.' Torrance, , The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 183.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 179. Also, quoting Gregory Nazianzen to the effect that such would overthrow the Trinity.

39 Ibid.

40 Torrance, Thomas F., ‘significant Features, a Common Reflection on the Agreed Statement’, Trinitarian Perspectives: Toward Doctrinal Agreement (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1994), p. 135.Google Scholar

41 Ibid., ‘Calvin's Doctrine of the Trinity’, pp. 41–76.

42 Ibid., ‘Toward an Ecumenical Consensus on the Trinity’, p. 80, n. 8.

43 Torrance, , The Christian Doctrine of God, p. 182.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., pp. 140–1.

45 Ibid., p. 180.

46 Ibid., p. 161.

47 Ibid.

48 Here I rely on Hill's, William J.The Three-Personed God: The Trinity as a Mystery of Salvation (Washington, DC: The Catholic University Press of America, 1982), pp. 255ff.Google Scholar

49 Zizioulas, , Being as Communion, p. 39.Google Scholar

50 Quoted in Clarke, W. Norris, Person and Being (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1993), p. 8.Google Scholar

51 Hill, , The Three-Personed God, p. 260.Google Scholar

52 Clark, , Person and Being, p. 14.Google Scholar

53 Ibid., p. 111.

54 See, for example, the Eleventh Council of Toledo (675): ‘He Himself is the Father of His own essence, who in an ineffably way has begotten the Son from His ineffable substance … We must believe that the Son is begotten or born … from the womb of the Father, that is from His substance’ (308, 525; 309, 526). Quoted from The Christian Faith in the Doctrinal Documents of the Catholic Church—Revised Edition. Edited by Neuner, J. SJ and Dupuis, J. SJ (New York: Alba House, 1982)Google Scholar. Bold numbers are from this volume with the corresponding italics numbers being their equivalent in Denzinger, H. and Schonmetzer, A.. Enchiridion Symbolorum, Definitionum et Dedarationum de rebus fidei et morum (Freiburg im Breisgau, 1965).Google Scholar

55 See especially the Fourth Lateran General Council (1215): ‘the three persons together, and each person distinctly; therefore in God there is only Trinity, not a quaternity, because each of the persons is that reality, viz. that divine substance, essence or nature which alone is the beginning of all things, apart from which nothing else can be found’. Ibid., 318, 804.