The Father's Eternal Freedom: The Personalist Trinitarian Ontology of John Zizioulas

301 Pages·2022·8.885 MB·English

by  Dario Chiapetti, Norman Russell

Th e Father’s Eternal Freedom
The Father’s Eternal
Freedom
The Personalist Trinitarian Ontology
of John Zizioulas
Dario Chiapetti
James Clarke & Co.
C
Hardback ISBN: 978 0 227 17773 0
Paperback ISBN: 978 0 227 17774 7
PDF ISBN: 978 0 227 17776 1
ePub ISBN: 978 0 227 17775 4
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Th e Father’s Eternal Freedom
Th e Personalist Trinitarian Ontology
of John Zizioulas
Dario Chiapetti
Edited with a Foreword by Norman Russell
James Clarke & Co.
James Clarke & Co.
P.O. Box 60
Cambridge
CB1 2NT
United Kingdom
www.jamesclarke.co
[email protected]
Hardback ISBN: 978 0 227 17773 0
Paperback ISBN: 978 0 227 17774 7
PDF ISBN: 978 0 227 17776 1
ePUB ISBN: 978 0 227 17775 4
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A record is available from the British Library
First published as «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre»
by Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2021
English translation fi rst published by James Clarke and Co., 2022
Copyright © Dario Chiapetti, 2021
English Translation, 2022
All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced,
stored electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
prior written permission from the Publisher
([email protected]).
Pro unitate Christianorum - Γιὰ τὴν ἑνότητα τῶν Χριστιανῶν
Tu es sanctus Dominus Deus solus, qui facis mirabilia.
Tu es fortis, Tu es magnus, Tu es altissimus,
Tu es rex omnipotens, Tu Pater sancte, rex caeli et terrae.
Tu es trinus et unus Dominus Deus deorum,
Tu es bonum, omne bonum, summum bonum,
Dominus Deus vivus et verus.
Francis of Assisi, Laudes Dei altissimi,
La Verna, 1224
Contents
Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Note on Citations xvii
Abbreviations xix
Introduction: General Aspects of the Figure and
Th ought of Zizioulas 1
Part 1 Zizioulas’ Reading of the Fathers: Th e Notion
of Person and the Doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father 9
Chapter 1 Th e Emergence of the Attribution of
Primary Ontological Content to the Notion of Person in
Trinitarian Refl ection 11
Athanasius: From the Nicene Doctrine of Homoousion
to Refl ection on the Relational Character of Ousia 12
Th e Cappadocians: Th e Ontological View of Hypostasis
as Tropos Hyparxeōs of Ousia 23
Maximus the Confessor: Th e Personalist Deepening of
the Notion of Hypostasis as an Ontological Principle of the
Freedom of Nature 84
Chapter 2 Th e Father, the Ontological Principle of the
Triune and One Being of God 102
Data Learned from Scripture: God is Father 102
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics:
God as the Aitia of the Trinitarian Being 104
viii The Father’s Eternal Freedom
Part 2 Zizioulas’ Th eological Development: Th e Father,
Free Cause of Being as Personhood-Freedom 161
Chapter 3 Th e Father: ‘Th e Ultimate Reality of God’s
Personal Existence’ 163
Th e Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 163
Th e Father as Trinity, as Ontological Principle of God’s
Triune Being 191
Th e Father as the One, as the Ontological Principle
of the One Being of God 208
One Trinitarian Principle of the Triune and One
Being of God: Th e Father as Existence for the Other
for the Sake of Personal Reality 232
Chapter 4 Th e Freedom that ‘Springs from the Very Way
the Hypostases are Constituted’: From the Freedom of the
Father, the Freedom of God 235
Divine Personhood: Freedom as a Mode of Existence
Caused in the Timelessness of the Unity of Nature 236
A Single Qualitative Freedom 256
Concluding Remarks: Zizioulas’ Bold Exercise in
Th eological Refl ection 257
Bibliography 265
Index 275
Foreword
John Zizioulas, metropolitan of Pergamon, is one of the most signifi cant
theologians of the late twentieth and early twenty-fi rst centuries. He
is well known not only to Orthodox Christians but also more widely
through the publication of his books in several Western languages
and, more importantly, his engagement with fundamental theological
and philosophical themes that transcend confessional boundaries. He
is a thinker, however, who frames his thoughts in essays and articles
rather than in monographs. His most infl uential books, Being as
Communion (1985) and Communion and Otherness (2006) are indeed
collections of articles united by a common theme. Th is means that his
seminal ideas are not developed systematically, as one would expect
to fi nd in a monograph. He returns to them frequently in diff erent
articles, examining them from various angles in ways that are not easily
summarised. Herein lies the fi rst important feature of Dario Chiapetti’s
book: its systematic exposition of Zizioulas’ personalist trinitarian
ontology gathered from a great many of the metropolitan’s occasional
writings. Such a systematic exposition, already initiated by Aristotle
Papanikolaou in his book Being with God (2006), has now been carried
forward in a signifi cant way.
Th e second important feature of Chiapetti’s book is its thorough
examination of Zizioulas’ patristic sources and its demonstration that
he stands in continuity with the patristic age. Th is continuity has oft en
been controverted. Although hailed by some as ‘a modern Father of
the Church’, Zizioulas has been accused by others of mishandling his
patristic sources under the guise of expounding them, and of insidiously
introducing ideas deriving from modern personalism and existentialism.
His philosophical enterprise has been ably defended by a number of
scholars – to engage with contemporary personalism and existentialism