AFTER OUR LIKENESS Zizioulas: Communion, One and Many
types of persons, and not the uniqueness of every person within a certain type.
Here again, we encounter the difficulty Zizioulas has in conceiving the par-
ticularity of persons. 229
Zizioulas's understanding of the laity as an ordo amplifies the asymmetry
between bishop and people. 230 The bishop occupies a position even more
superior to that of the individual layperson than to that of the entire ordo of
the laity; while the ordo of the laity is ecclesiologically indispensable, the in-
dividual person by contrast seems almost insignificant. Although Zizioulas
writes that "the Eucharist requires the gathering of all the members of a local
community,"231 this is an excessively harsh, because unfulfillable, condition to
impose on the Eucharist. Neither is it required within the framework of Ziziou-
las's thought. The presence of the ordo of the laity suffices.232 Indeed, Zizioulas's
ecclesiology can get along quite well without the presence of the majority of
those who belong to a given local church.
The task of the ordo of the laity in saying the liturgical "amen," and the
corresponding task of the ordo of bishops to act in persona Christi, make the
eucharistic gathering into a strictly bipolar event. Neither do the various tasks
of the presbyters and deacons interrupt this bipolarity. The presbyters and
deacons surround the bishop and stand opposite the people; together with the
bishop, they constitute the one pole, while the laity represents the other pole.
This bipolarity allegedly corresponds to the Pauline church order, according to
which the people are to speak the "amen" in the charismatic worship services
(1 Cor. 14:16).233
229. See 2.1.2 above. Neither is it clear how the personalization occurring in the
relation of Christ to the Father — this personalization must always occur as the constituting
of particular persons — is related to the personalization occurring through the Spirit in the
bestowal of charismata. It seems as if Zizioulas is allowing the two to coincide, whereby the
second process is to be understood as a historical concretization of the first (see Zizioulas,
"Ordination," 10). If this is indeed the case, then it is unclear how on die basis of this one
relation of Christ that personalizes human beings the differentiation of those human beings
into various orders is to occur.
230. Although Baillargeon praises this reciprocity between bishop and people expli-
cated by Zizioulas, he does not draw attention to the asymmetrical character of this reci-
procity (see Baillargeon, Communion, 83, 89, 115ff.).
231. Zizioulas, "Presuppositions," 348 (my emphasis).
232. McPartlan finds that the idea of corporate personality implies the necessity for
all members of a local church to be present at the celebration of the Eucharist. "Corporate
personality requires actual personal presence" (McPartlan, Eucharist, 177; cf. p. 210). Although
this may be true, it would lead to the absurd notion that all those who constitute the corporate
personality of Christ must continuously celebrate the Eucharist.
233. See Zizioulas, "L'eucharistie," 43; "Community," 30. In this regard, see VI. 1.2
below.
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4.4. Apostolicity and Conciliarity
Since a certain form of relationships with other eucharistic congregations plays
a role in the ontology of every eucharistic congregation, translocal as well as
local structures are essential to its being as a church. These structures are of
an episcopal nature, since in Zizioulas's view only the bishop as the head of
the congregation can represent them concretely. The bishop, as a catholic
person rather than as an individual, is the real bond between the local church
and all other local churches, within both time (apostolicity) and space (con-
ciliarity).
1. The decisive element in Zizioulas's understanding of ecclesiality is the
eschatological "continuity" of the church with Christ, something that becomes
an event again and again in the eucharistic gatherings. Viewed from this per-
spective, the bishop is the alter Christus who through the Spirit mediates pro-
leptically the eschatological catholicity of the local church. According to Ziziou-
las, however, the eschatological continuity of the church is inconceivable
without its historical continuity. Viewed from this perspective, the bishop is the
alter apostolus preserving the catholicity of the church within time. He is "re-
sponsible for the relation of his church with the first apostolic community, the
historical college of the Twelve. Thus through the bishop each local church is
united with all the local churches of the past."234 This is why a person can only
be ordained as a bishop by the bishops themselves, who received their own
ordination from the apostles in unbroken historical continuity.
Zizioulas does not, however, examine more closely just why the continuity
of every local church with the church of the apostles is to be guaranteed precisely
and only through ordination in the apostolic succession; given his theological
premise, however, this emphasis on apostolic succession does seem consistent.
If, that is, pneumatically eschatological communion with the life of the triune
God is mediated not cognitively, but rather in the communal eucharistic event,
then the continuity of the church with the church of the apostles can hardly be
mediated by way of the continuity of doctrine comprehended and transmitted
cognitively. The continuity of the church must then also be mediated in an
event, more precisely, in a eucharistically situated event of xevpoxovia ("ordi-
nation").
Not only is ordination to the office of bishop to be performed by someone
who has already himself been ordained bishop, but two or three bishops, pref-
erably from neighboring dioceses, should also be present. This expresses the
connection of every bishop with all other bishops, a connection constituting
the bishop as bishop and the church as church. The bishop
234. Zizioulas, "Bishop," 31.
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