Douglas Knight

Sense again meets reader in Metropolitan John’s (Zizioulas) latest text in translation. Superb editing by Dr. Douglas H. Knight, coupled with a succinct introduction by the same, should move this book to the top of any reading list among students of theology, ecumenism, international politics, sociology, economics, languages and cultures.
Chapters were compiled across three decades [...]

[Read more →]

This book does not claim to be a systematic theology, and unlike my previous books, does not contain references to other authors, except to Biblical and Patristic sources. It is written primarily for undergraduate students, although I hope that other theologians may find it useful too.
Orthodox theology in our time must operate in an ecumenical [...]

[Read more →]

Christians have a relationship of direct and personal familiarity with the Church and the saints. The relationship is personal and involves our entire being, not merely our minds or feelings. Yet when someone lights a candle or makes an offering, you will often hear someone remark that such an action is meaningless if that person [...]

[Read more →]

Gathered around the bishop the presbyters are the image of the apostles, pointing us to Christ. The presbyters’ first task therefore was teaching, convening assemblies, preaching and catechizing. Saint John Chrysostom and Origen have left us the homilies they preached as presbyters. While bishops gave us our liturgies and in particular the anaphoras, the Eucharistic [...]

[Read more →]

This is a piece for a volume on eschatology edited by John Manoussakis and Neal Deroo to be published by Ashgate in 2009
The Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas is most often associated with the Christian doctrine of the person. The concept of the person holds together the two issues of communion and freedom. Zizioulas argues that [...]

[Read more →]

This is why the Church must safeguard the eucharist from new introductions. I remember in one of my first visits to Mount Athos I heard a psalm of lament being sung during holy communion. I expressed my surprise to the Prior of the monastery, and when he looked into it they found that this order [...]

[Read more →]

The Saint-Serge Institute in Paris has awarded the title of Docteur Honoris Causa to Metropolitan John Zizioulas. Here are details and video of his acceptance speech. Bishop John responded with ‘La contribution de la théologie orthodoxe occidentale’ (PDF). The Laudatio by Michel Stavrou included this:
Il faut noter que votre style littéraire est simple et dépouillé, [...]

[Read more →]

The Zizioulas Lectures in Christian Dogmatics are on their way. That marvellous publisher, T & T Clark, has promised to get the book out in October (2008).
Here is something from the Editor’s Introduction
Man was given the freedom of God to decide freely, and on behalf of all creation, for participation [...]

[Read more →]

It is perhaps our usual assumption that we exist first, and then that we love. But let us imagine that our existence depends on our relationship with those we love. The more we love, or the more we are loved, the more existence or reality we acquire. Our being derives from the company of those [...]

[Read more →]

When we refer to the remembering of the future we part ways with the whole Western intellectual tradition. The Church confesses that Holy Spirit brings the future breaking in to history. Our kingdoms are founded on opposition to one another, each kingdom is in competition with every other. The peace of God, sustained by the [...]

[Read more →]

Christians have a relationship of direct and personal familiarity with the Church and the saints. The relationship involves our entire being. Yet when someone lights a candle or makes an offering, you will often hear the remark that such an action is meaningless if that person is not thinking the right set of thoughts. But [...]

[Read more →]

Since his existence is not a given thing, God is not obliged to choose whether to say yes or no to it. For him there is only one way to exercise freedom, and that is affirmatively, positively. What is there for him to say no to? God has the freedom of saying [...]

[Read more →]

The Gospel points to real life. When the bible talks about eternal life, it does not mean some other life, but simply the reality of life. The reality of life is spiritual, of the Holy Spirit. This life does not die and does not share in the deception of that life that leads to death. [...]

[Read more →]

Copies of The Theology of John Zizioulas arrived here today. The book is published in May, and so far is visible on Amazon.co.uk only. Ashgate have the Contents page and Introduction. Here’s the blurb.
John Zizioulas is widely recognised as the most significant Orthodox theologian of the last half century and acclaimed advocate of [...]

[Read more →]

John Zizioulas believes ecumenism, conciliarity and the Eucharist belong to the very being of the Church. The bishop is intrinsic to ecumenism. Zizioulas’ account of the relation of the particular and universal, one and many, demonstrates that the relationships of the bishop and his congregation, and of the local and the worldwide Church, are essentially [...]

[Read more →]

Metropolitan John Zizioulas’ earlier work, Being as Communion, has a fair claim to be one of the most influential theological books of the later twentieth century; it had a lasting effect on ecumenical discussions and on the vocabulary and assumptions of many churches as they sought to clarify their self-understanding and indeed their understanding of [...]

[Read more →]

One highlight of the AAR, though there was no fanfare, was the arrival of Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, the second volume of Metropolitan John Zizioulas.
I intended to post a chunk from the cracking Preface by Rowan Williams and the author’s dedication to George Florovksy and Colin [...]

[Read more →]

Alan Brown (right) and I met Metropolitan John Zizioulas in London at Heythrop last Friday. It was wonderful to see the Metropolitan again. We have both got older, but I was more polite about this than he was. We talked about Rome and Constantinople, and then relieved to get off these vexed questions, we talked [...]

[Read more →]

Here at at last is the first notice from the publishers Continuum – T & T Clark of the second volume (or third, if you count Eucharist, Bishop, Church, translated into English forty years after its first publcation in Greek) from Professor John Zizoulas, Metropolitan of Pergamon (Jean de Pergame). Here is the blurb from [...]

[Read more →]

Here is another excerpt from ‘The Critics of ‘Being as Communion”, Alan Brown chapter’s in Personhod and the Church: The Theology of John Zizoulas, due to appear at the end of this year:
“Baptism is a new birth in which the human being is newly hypostasised in the mode of being of Jesus Christ. This ontological [...]

[Read more →]