Foarte Important Pentru Articol

Ad Orientem
Essays from Serbian Theology Today

edited by
Bogoljub Šijaković
Cover illustrations:
Crucifixion of Christ, Monastery Studenica (1208/9), Serbia
Monastery Chilandari, Holy Mountain Athos (12th century), Greece
Monastery of the Patriarchate of Peć (13th century), Serbia
Temple of Saint Sava, Belgrade, Serbia
Saint Sava (1175-1236), King’s Church (1315), Monastery Studenica, Serbia
Ad Orientem
Essays from Serbian Theology Today
edited by
Bogoljub Šijaković
Belgrade • Los Angeles

2019
B. Šijaković, ed., Ad Orientem: Essays from Serbian Theology Today,
Belgrade: Faculty of Ortodox Theology 2019, 5
Preliminary note
A number of teachers from the Faculties of Orthodox Theology in

Belgrade (Republic of Serbia) and Foča (Republic of Srpska, BH) felt
the collegial need to present in English the essays collected in this
publication. Hence, this collection brings forth essays from Serbian
theology today. Still, it is by no means an anthology of contemporary
Serbian theology (such a collection should contain a vast majority of
relevant papers whose quality of subject and range of topics would
fully represent the state of research in Serbian theology).
The authors devote their contributions to the great jubilee – 800 years
of autocefaly of the Serbian Orthodox Church (1219–2019).
Belgrade, 14 January 2019 B. Š.

Table of Contents
Preliminary note . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Rodoljub Kubat
Allegoresis as a Method of Demythologization
The Bible and allegorical demythologization in the pre-Christian period 15
The Bible and the allegorical demythologization
of early Christian exegetes � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 20
Conclusion � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 26
PRedRag dRagutinović
The Parables: A Theological Approach
Reading Parables in the Context of the Orthodox Church Today
1� What Is a Parable? � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 29
2� A Brief Survey of Research on the Parables � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 31
3� The Deficiency of Orthodox Biblical Scholarship to Accept
Western Research on the Parables � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 32
4� The Church Fathers’ Hermeneutics of the Parables � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 36
4�1� The Methodology� A Sketch � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 36
4�2� The Christological Approach: totus Christus � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 38
4�3� The Canonical approach � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 42
5� Hermeneutical Considerations � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 46
5�1� The Parables as Open Texts: Against Standing Metaphors � � � � � � � 47
5�2� The Parables as Theological Texts � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 50
6� Conclusion � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 51
vladan tatalović
Orthodox New Testament Scholarship in Serbia
1� Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 53
2� Analyzing the context: Serbian theological education before the
opening of the FOTB � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 55
3� Orthodox New Testament scholarship in Serbia after the opening
of FOTB � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 65
3�1� Ilarion Zeremski (1865-1931) � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 67
3�2� Dimitrije Stefanović (1882-1943) � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 70
3�3� Emilijan Čarnić (1914-1995) � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 75
3�4� Irinej Bulović (1947-) � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 82
4� Concluding remarks � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 87
8 Table of ConTenTs
vladan PeRišić
Can Orthodox Theology Be Contextual?
What is Contextual Theology? � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 89
Hermeneutical Problems of Interpretation� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 91
Theological Context � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 95
The Case of Orthodox Theology � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 98
aleKsandaR djaKovac
Apocatastasis and Predestination
Ontological Assumptions of Origen’s
and Augustine’s Soteriologies
Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 103
1� Augustine’s acquaintance with Origen’s works and their soteriologies � 104
2� Apocatastasis� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 108
3� Predestination � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 111
Conclusion � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 114
MiKonja Knežević
The Order (τάξις) of Persons of the Holy Trinity
in Apodictic Treatises of Gregory Palamas
1� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 117
2� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 125
3� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 128
4� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 138
bogdan lubaRdić
Orthodox Theology of Personhood
A critical overview of currents, models and ideas
in the 20th century
I� Contextual orientation � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 146
II� Theory of personhood: structures and history of development � � � � � 148
1� Turns of theology � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 149
2� Modelling personhood � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 155
3� Transmission and development � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 162
3�1� Theoretical paradigms and markers of personhood � � � � � � � � � � 162
III� Critical assessment� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 166
1� Consequences � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 166
2� Problems and issues � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 174
3� The nascent of the age of personhood � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 182
Excursus� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 184
Table of Contents 9
MaKsiM vasiljević
What Does “Rising from the Dead” Mean?
A Hermeneutics of Resurrection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 189
The relationship between the truth and human culture � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 191
Dogmas in and of themselves and their relation to us � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 193
Truth and the Resurrection of Christ � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 199
Implications of a hermeneutics of resurrection � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 204
daRKo djogo
History as Identity:
Contribution to the Orthodox Consciousness of Historicity
Fact, history, identity � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 210
Apologia historiae � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 214
bogoljub šijaKović
The Great War, Vidovdan Ethics, and Memory of Serbian Sacrifice
— On the History of Ideas and Memory —
1� Diagnosis of the times � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 220
2� Expansionism as overture � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 222
3� Spiritual situation before the Great War � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 224
4� “Ideas from 1914” etc� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 228
5� Instigation to war � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 234
6� On responsibility for the war � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 239
7� Young Bosnia and Vidovdan ethics � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 244
8� Sacrifice, memory, identity � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 253
9� “A cry and a graveyard are my people�”
– To whom is the Vidovdan Temple to be erected? � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 256
10� Memory of the sacrifice victim � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 271
vedRan golijanin
Paul Tillich’s Theory of Religious Symbolism:
Meaning, Significance, Potential
The context of Tillich’s theory of religious symbolism � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 275
Understanding symbols and myths � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 278
God and Christ as symbols � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 282
Deliteralization and demythologization � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 287
Evaluation of Tillich’s theory of religious symbolism � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 289
10 Table of ConTenTs
andRej jeftić
Andrew Newberg’s Model of Neurotheology:
A Critical Overview
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 299
1� Definition and basic tasks of neurotheology � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 304
2� Practical level of neurological research � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 307
3� Theoretical level of neurotheological research � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 310
4� Critique of (Newberg’s) neurotheology� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 313
Concluding remarks� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 318
ZdRavKo jovanović
Towards a Nonjuridical Understanding
of Episcopal Succession
1� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 326
2� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 327
3� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 330
4� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 331
5� � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 336
ZlatKo Matić
On Some Questions of Contemporary Liturgical Practice:
The Altar Bell in the Liturgy
(Regarding Documents from the 19th Century)
Introduction � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 341
1� Presenting the document � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 343
2� Historical circumstances � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 347
3� Theological frame � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 350
Conclusion � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 359
List of first publishing � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 363

The Authors � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 365
B. Šijaković, ed., Ad Orientem: Essays from Serbian Theology Today,
Belgrade: Faculty of Ortodox Theology 2019, 144-188
bogdan lubaRdić
Orthodox Theology of Personhood

A critical overview of currents, models and ideas
in the 20th century1
Abstract. This paper offers a critical overview of the theology of person-
hood which has become one of the distinctive features of Orthodox the-
ology in the 20th century. A systematized synthesis of traits and elements
within this movement is offered, thus rectifying a certain lack of it in cur-
rent literature. On one hand it is shown that this theology springs forth
from the neo-patristic ‘turn’ of Orthodox theology. On the other hand it
is demonstrated how theoretical instances of this ‘turn’ bear upon, and
appear within the model of the conception of personhood: in its Trin-
itarian, Christological, ecclesiological and anthropological dimensions.
It is this model of personhood, in its basic elements and connections,
which is at work in the ongoing debate on the human person in the Or-
thodox Church. The model of personhood and the model of eucharis-
tic, i.e. ecclesial self-understanding of the Church are shown to implicate
each other intrinsically. This theology is put into perspective in terms of
overviewing its development and transmission between four notable ex-
ponents: Lossky, Yannaras, Zizioulas and Horuzhy. The model of person-
1 This study essay (originally titled: “What is a Human Being According to Orthodox
Theologians”) was presented on 2 Sept 2010 in Christ Church, Oxford within the plena-
ry proceedings of the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Di-
alogue (ICAOTD). Subsequently it was revised and published under the following title:
Bogdan Lubardić, “Orthodox Theology of Personhood: a Critical Overview. Part One”,
The Expository Times (International Theological Journal) 122:11 (2011) 521-530; idem, “Or-
thodox Theology of Personhood: a Critical Overview. Part Two”, The Expository Times (In-
ternational Theological Journal) 122:12 (2011) 573-581. In regard to the latter, this version is
sомеwhat re-edited: expanded and updated, with the excursus at the end added. I render
deep gratitude and sincere respect to Professor John Riches from the School of Divinity
of the University of Edinburgh who as editor of Expository Times kindly encouraged me
to contribute my study essay, and no less to Dr Alison Jack for proof reading the said text.
Orthodox Theology of Personhood 145
hood in particular is shown to be re-received and specifically reworked

by each, not without sparks of mutual critique. Still, the general tenden-
cy is to make the conception of personhood more ecclesially and anthro-
pologically relevant. Critical consequences of this of theological thought
are not to be understood narrowly. For they ramify to bear upon episte-
mology, ontology, philosophy, theology proper and social ethics. Apart
from fruitful solutions to the questions raised by thematizing the chal-
lenge of personhood (as immanent to our being image-bearers of God),
we display entry points for critical problematization of this current of
Orthodox thinking. Hence critical consequences of the theology of per-
sonhood are not articulated without reference to the meta-critique of it,
as offered by a third generation of Orthodox theologians. We propose to
view this process in general as a birth of a ‘theological age’ of sorts: the
nascent of ecclesial understanding of our personhood in God.
Keywords. God, image and likeness, personhood and nature, ecclesial
communion, the way of being, relational being, the other, deification,
the age of personhood
“For it is the God who said ‘Let light shine out of darkness’, who
has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the
glory of God in the face*2 (en prosopo) of Christ” (2Cor 4:6)
One of the distinctive characteristics of contemporary Orthodox theol-
ogy is given by its teaching on the human person. This is not to say that
there is nothing in Orthodox theological reflection but thinking on the
reality of personhood. Nevertheless, most Orthodox theological trends,
diverse as they are, bear a ‘family resemblance’ precisely by defending an
ontology of personhood. This is so because of the burning issues facing
the contemporary human being, or ‘person’ – particularly so in a context
of theoretical postmodernism and the socio-political effects of globaliza-
tion. The history and structuring of the Orthodox theology of person-
hood, apart from being rarely overviewed, is however extremely complex
and theoretically demanding. To make things more straightforward and
concise, we propose to thematize the following basic frames: (I) cultural
context, (II) theoretical structures and history of development, (III) criti-
cal consequences of the respective insights and problems encountered in
view of further tasks for theology of the human being.
2 An asterisk denotes that italics have been added by the author. Scripture quotations
are given according to the Revised Standard Version of the Bible (© 1946, 1952, and 1971).
146 bogdan lubaRdić
I. Contextual orientation
Orthodox theology thematizing the reality of human personhood, par-
ticularly in regard to the ‘modern’ situation, in part, is a result of its dia-
logue with analogous concerns in the western tradition of thought. This
has an important implication in terms of contextual orientation. Name-
ly, it must be viewed not as self-enclosed, remote or exotic but as open
to critical dialogue with other thought forms — precisely in the act of
realizing its own inner dialogue as well. This helps us remember that
Orthodox theology is an inalienable part of a common Hellenic-Euro-
pean spiritual legacy shared by Christians. This is most apparent in its
attempt to meaningfully conceptualize the reality of personhood. Both
Russian and Greek Orthodox theologians of the 20th century, theolo-
gians belonging to other Orthodox localities notwithstanding, critically
engage western philosophy and theology on the matter of personalism.
They agree that the human person is of paramount importance for
understanding the fundamentals of the natural, historical and social
life-world of humanity. However, they mostly disagree with the claim
that the results of western philosophical and theological development
do full justice to what is implicit, and explicit, in the revealed truths of
Christianity about what it is to be a ‘human being’. One illustrative in-
stance is the attempt by Russian Orthodox theologians (later followed
by their Greek colleagues) to overcome the speculative subject of Ger-
man philosophical idealism. The philosophy of ‘consciousness’ of the
latter, it is argued, with its emphasis on the speculative ‘Ego’, fails to
think and appropriate the ontological content of personhood as given
in Christ by the Spirit to the Christian Church. The discursive explica-
tion of this ‘ontological’ content, then, coincides with the re-affirmation
of Orthodox theological alternatives in theory and practice. It also en-
tails an attempt to further develop Christian doctrine on the matter it-
self. As stated by Vladimir N. Lossky: “… it is by the fact, by the event of
Incarnation that the creation of man in the image of God receives all its
theological value, which remained unperceived (or somewhat impover-
ished) in the letter of the sacerdotal narrative of the creation…”.3
But it was the pre-Losskyean ‘sophiological’ school of theology and
religious philosophy, founded by Russian thinkers like Soloviev, Flo-
3 Vladimir Lossky, “The Theology of the Image”, in idem, In the Image and Likeness, SVS
Press, Crestwood – New York 1974, 136.

rensky, Bulgakov that first made the respective points mentioned. In a

word, speculative self-consciousness – in itself – cannot appropriate the
reality of divine-human personhood precisely because the latter is ‘al-
ways already’ of a different order of being. Hence divine-human per-
sonhood, by default, escapes the intellectualized, naturalized and overly
historicized horizons of philosophical and theological idealism, as well
as its attempts to come to terms with revelation and ontological events
implied in the personal realities of communion between God ‘and’
the Church. The next generation of Russian thinkers, notably Lossky
and Florovsky during the 30s and 40s, followed the lines drawn by the
‘sophiologists’ of the early 20th century. They were joined by their Greek
colleagues in the 60s and 70s, outstandingly by Christos Yannaras and
later by John D. Zizioulas, together with Sergei S. Horuzhy (again from
the Russian ‘side’), and followed by many others of the newest genera-
tion, for instance: Nikolaos Loudovikos on the Greek ‘side’. What the
following generations did and keep doing, amongst other things, is to
maintain the ‘ontological’ direction of thinking on personhood (as di-
vine-human reality) and, simultaneously, to cleanse the sophiological
train of thought from speculative remnants of German mysticism and
idealism, including other similar continental philosophemes.
The aforementioned points, let us reiterate, do not imply that recent
Orthodox theologians dismiss all dialogue with western philosophy and
theology. To the contrary, much cross-fertilization has occurred. One
notable and illustrative instance is Lossky’s4 discreet and Yannaras’s5
(and Horuzhy’s) blunt engagement with Heidegger’s, note, critique of
the history of western thought as ‘ontotheology’ (taken as the process of
forgetting ‘being’ as an event), or with his phenomenologically descrip-
tive affirmation of the ecstatic character of the human ‘Dasein’ (human
being as ‘here-being’). The point being that an understanding of the be-
ing of God and being of humankind (and of other kinds of being) in
terms of closed subjectivity and-or hierarchical orderings of speculative
4 Vladimir Lossky, “The Theological Notion of the Human Person”, in idem, In the Im-
age and Likeness, 120.

5 Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God. Heidegger and the Are-
opagite, T & T Clark, London 2005 (the Greek original appeared in 1967 [²1986]). Hence-
forth we refer to the Serbian translation = Hristos Janaras, Hajdeger i Dionisije Areopagit,
tr. S. Jakšić (proofreading: hierodeacon Maksim Vasiljević), Bratstvo Svetog Simeona
Mirotočivog, Vrnjačka Banja ¹1997 — original in Cyrillic.
and intellectual abstracta is rejected. This is done because, in such a case,

the difference between them (i.e. God, humanity etc, mapped within
static ontological ‘regions’) is only that of degree of power of being. Ex-
pressly, they are seen merely as ‘kinds’ (genera) of being, conceptual-
ized hierarchically in terms of their abstract essence or whatness (quid-
ditas) — which is taken to represent what the kind of being ‘essentially’
is, or what beings ‘truly’ are, respectively. (Additionally, the historicity
of being a being is not properly accounted for). Hence God as supreme
‘thing’ (ens realissimum) is not different in principle to any other ‘thing’
or thingness (res). (The same may be said for the human being, if and
when regarded merely as a ‘thing’ [e.g. a thinking biological thing: ‘an-
imal rationale’], stripped of its historicity, contingency and uniqueness
etc). The spiritual and existential and historical event of encountering
God by virtue of one’s inner divine-human personhood is thus seriously
jeopardized (as Yannaras and Horuzhy warn, critically, in light of their
engagement with both Heidegger and the Orthodox church fathers).
Moreover, and again, the most recent ensuing development of the Or-
thodox theology of personhood may be viewed as another ‘cleansing’
attempt. This time it is not against sophiological tendencies of the early
crypto-idealist romantic Russians, but against supposedly ‘existentialist’
or ‘apophatical’ tendencies of some later Russians (Lossky, Meyendorff)
and some later Greeks (Yannaras).6 The question, then, follows suit: If
the transcendental ‘Ego’ of Kant or Fichte, or the speculative ‘Subject’ of
Hegel and Schelling fail to do justice to the Orthodox understanding of
the person, is Heidegger’s fundamental ontology of ‘facticity’ (Faktiz-
ität) or his idea of temporalized ‘here-being’ (Dasein) to be taken for an
adequate alternative, even a better one? Despite certain ‘congenial’ fea-
tures in the comparative sense (congenial formally rather than substan-
tially), authors such as Sartre or Heidegger, it is argued, may well prove
misleading: even as sources for critical orientation of thought.
II. Theory of personhood:

structures and history of development
But what is the reality of the human person in the ‘ontological’ sense?
What is the Orthodox understanding of ‘personhood’ proper? To an-
6 Ironically, it was precisely Lossky who executed very brisk and encompassing critiques
of sophiology in an attempt to thus purify Orthodox theology in terms of authenticity.

swer this question it is best to introduce two additional sets of premises.

The first set is attached to the general theological underpinning of the
‘ontology of personhood’ — namely to the theologia backing the teach-
ing on divine-human personhood. The second set is connected to the
basic elements that constitute the newer Orthodox model of divine-hu-
man personhood. Both will allow further insights into the eminently
contextual, dialogical and hermeneutical nature of ‘personalist’ theolog-
ical explorations of contemporary Orthodox thinkers.
1. Turns of theology
The theology of personhood is a result of several fundamental ‘turns’ in
Orthodox theology. These turns are common ground to a host of Ortho-
dox thinkers of the 20th century. We shall presuppose these thinkers but
refer in quotes, as the case may be, only to four paradigmatic authors of
the Russian and Greek sides of newer Orthodox thought: Lossky (1903–
1958), Yannaras (*1935), Zizioulas (*1931) and Horuzhy (*1941).
1.1. Neo-patristic ‘turn’. The first turn is the so called ‘neo-patris-
tic synthesis’. Thus far, regardless of certain notable attempts to move
into a ‘post-neo-patristic’ perspective, it is still the main horizon of all
other points of turning of theology. The process of dialogue with the
West, particularly with its theology and philosophy, on a deeper level, is
part and parcel of a more general movement of returning to the roots
(pegai) of Orthodox spiritual ethos intimately tied, as it is, to the teach-
ings of the fathers of the Church. The process was originally inaugurat-
ed by theologians of a western provenance, which strikes us as some-
what ironic. Nevertheless, the Orthodox side of the process is a function
of emancipation not only from particular western theologoumena7 or
philosophemes. It is in fact an attempt to retrieve the authentic ethos
and mind (phronema) of the apostolic Church: in thought and action.
The basic complaint is that the Orthodox Church has to free itself from
its ‘scholastic captivity’ with roots in the ‘Latinisation’ of Orthodoxy 17th
7 Taking his cue from Vasily V. Bolotov (1854–1900), George Florovsky (1893–1979)
considers a theologoumenon to be an important theological opinion. Accordingly, the-
ologoumena should be regarded as permissible theoretical views as long as they do not
claim obligatory dogmatic authority. This term is usefully elucidated by Bolotov: “Thesen
über das ‘Filioque’ von einem russischen Theologen”, Internationale theologische Zeitschrift
6:24 (1898) 681-682; cf. George Florovsky, “The Orthodox Churches and the Ecumeni-
cal Movement Prior to 1910”, in: R. Rouse, S. C. Neill (eds.), A History of the Ecumenical
Movement, vol. 1: 1517–1948, London ³1986, 208-220.
and 18th century.8 This was then transposed into a programme by a mul-
titude of thinkers, most notably Florovsky, Lossky, Afanasiev, Meyen-
dorff and Schmemann. Amongst other things, this programme implies
emancipation from the domination of essentialist, rationalist and mor-
alist construals in matters theological, as well as from apologetic and
confessionalist attitudes. The methods (form) of Orthodox theology, it
is argued, should be intrinsically adequate to the substance (content) of
its living spiritual experience.9 This was not the case in the 17th and 18th
centuries, nor was it so at time of the ending of the 19th and beginning of
the 20th century. Since, it is stated, the methods of theology, then, were
overly casuistic, speculative and moralistic: ‘ossified’ and not authenti-
cally in tune with ‘true’ Orthodox thought and life.
1.2. Apophatic ‘turn’. This brings us to the second important
change of Orthodox mind set which may be labelled as the ‘apophatic’
way of theology. The return to the living experience of the Church is the
other side of returning to the living God: this side of speculative Chris-
tian metaphysics. Thence emerges another major ‘postulate’ of Ortho-
dox personalist theology. Namely, the primordial context for theology is
divine-human communion. This implies encountering Christ the God-
Man from ‘within’ the being of the Church, the Church being the histor-
ical extension of His body incarnate. As suggested by Lossky: “The idea
of the ‘Image of God’ is attached here to the hypostasis of the Son who,
in becoming man, makes visible in the human nature which he assumes
His divine Person, consubstantial with the Father”.10 The only way to re-
appropriate our likeness to that, then, is by entering the body of Christ
— the Church where, ultimately in a face to face deifying vision,11 our
personhood is re-discovered and elevated to that of God by the grace of
the Spirit. The primacy of this experience is reflected in the insistence
that theology should shift from a ‘positive’ mode to a ‘negative’ mode.
This does not entail a suspension of thought. Negative theological dis-
8 George Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology (in Russian), YMCA Press, Paris 1937,
30-56, 57-81.
9 Following in the footsteps of Florovsky, John Zizioulas underlines that point in exem-
plary fashion in idem, “Ecumenical Dimensions of Orthodox Theological Education”, in:

Orthodox Theological Education for the Life and Witness of the Church, Geneva 1978, 3-40.
10 Vladimir Lossky, “The Theology of the Image”, 136.
11 Vladimir Lossky, “The Palamite Synthesis”, in idem, The Vision of God, SVS Press,
Crestwood – New York 1983, 168-169.

course is itself positive on a different level (saying what God ‘is not’ is
still saying something). What it means is that theology is a discursive
symbolization of the spiritual experience of an encounter with a living
God. Therefore, what is properly ‘apophatic’ is this personal experience
of inter-communion with a personal God: a God who is One yet Three,
transcendent yet immanent, uncreated yet ecclesially incarnate in his-
tory. No rationalistic construal, in itself, can capture this spiritual event,
nor can it do justice to the paradoxical nature of ‘revelations’ respective
to it. That is why, note, the neo-patristic movement of thought warrants
a most immanent connection between an apophatic and a personalist
approach in theology. According to Yannaras: “... apophatism as effec-
tive renouncing of the consolidation of knowledge in rational definitions
represents a cognitive attitude which leads to the dynamic of the ontol-
ogy of person, that is, to making meaningful both the subject and the
fore-placed reality which cannot be subdued to any a priori necessity”.12
In other words, the apophatic turn properly understood implies the re-
discovery of personhood on both sides: the side of uncreated divinity
and the side of created humanity respectively.13 One more point. The
living God is not a solitary entity. God is Himself a communion of di-
vine persons. Accordingly, Christ as transformative agency and experi-
ence is present in us, and we in Christ (en Christou), by the co-action of
the Spirit (Pneuma) in the name of the Father (Pater). This has two pro-
found consequences. The first underscores the apophatic point. Name-
ly, God is discovered to be not only God-Man (which is itself antinomi-
cal to the reasoning ‘brain’). He is also discovered to be a triune God. He
reveals Himself as three persons sharing one self-same nature (physis).
Moreover, such a God is a union of self-sameness (one) and particulari-
ty (three). This is another reason why ‘reason’ (dianoia), trapped in anti-
nomical impasse, fails to render sufficient spiritual and theoretical jus-
tice to such a God. But an apophatic experience of this triune mystery,
granted to the experiencing person, may be symbolized theologically by
an adequate – apophatic – mind (nous). To put it in a nutshell: dogmat-
ic statements are, in fact, theological formulations of this primordial ex-
12 Christos Yannaras, On the Absence and Unknowability of God, Athens 1967 (= Hris-
tos Janaras, Hajdeger i Dionisije Areopagit, 79).

13 John D. Zizioulas, “The Being of God and the Вeing of Man”, in idem, The One and
the Many. Studies on God, Man and the Church and the World Today, Sebastian Press,
Alhambra CA 2010, 33.
perience. Hence the mysteries of the Church (including the sacraments)

and the dogmas are two sides of the same experiential encounter event:
mystical life and theology are one in the life of the Body of Christ, or
Church. For this reason apophatic ‘ethos’ is not an individualistic mysti-
cism, nor is it something private. In fact, it is consummated as person-
al life in and for the Church. According to Yannaras: “Ecclesial God-
knowing (theognosia) represents an equal way of life — knowledge is
an act and fact of participation in a new way of existence. This is not an
ideological calibration nor is it a moral conformity, but an existential
‘metamorphosis’ realized in the grace of the Holy Spirit within limitless
limits of freedom, that is, with the liturgical consent of man. […] The
Church represents the objective possibility of apophatic God-knowing,
and apophatic God-knowing is the experience of life of the eucharistic
body, that is, of life realized with the help of the Spirit of God”.14
1.3. Trinitarian ‘turn’. The third important change of mind set indi-
cates that next to the (1) divine-human context of Orthodox theology, the
(2) Trinitarian context of divine-human communion is another essential
point of departure for the theology of personhood. Since by communion
with the person of Christ one re-discovers his divine-human person, it
follows that human personhood is not only Christ-like but also Trini-
ty-like. Christ does nothing alone or by Himself: the energies of Christ
always entail action in unity with the other two divine Persons (hypos-
tases). This means that the Christology of personhood is discovered to
be most immanently connected to a triadology of personhood (for hu-
manity is created as an image of God in Christ by the Spirit). Lastly, this
implies that Christian anthropology is to be grounded Christological-
ly and triadologically and, by extension, pneumatologically — all with-
in an ecclesial setting. Consequently Yannaras calls for an ‘ecclesiologi-
cal anthropology’.15 “The triadic Proto-Image (Archetype) of the truth of
man is the way of existence of Christ, that is the unity of the Church…”.16
The person created in the image of Christ is a communal structure, be-
15 Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith. Introduction to Orthodox Theology, T & T Clark,
Edinburgh 1991 (we refer to the Serbian translation = Hristos Janaras, Azbučnik vere, tr.
S. Jakšić Beseda, Novi Sad 2000, 83 — original in Cyrillic).
16 Christos Yannaras, Truth and Unity of the Church, Athens 1977 (we refer to the Ser-
bian translation = Hristos Janaras, Istina i jedinstvo Crkve, tr. S. Jakšić, Beseda, Novi Sad
2004, 26 — original in Cyrillic).
cause Christ is in communion with the Father and Spirit — and with our
humanity invited to commence becoming the Church.
1.4. Eucharistic ‘turn’. The encounter with a triune God revealed
through life in Christ is made possible, by the Spirit, by entering the
Church in baptism. As stated by Zizioulas: “[in] the sacrament of bap-
tism […] the structure of the Trinity is made the structure of the hy-
postasis of the person being baptized, a fact which makes Paul summa-
rize the sense of baptism with the phrase, ‘Spirit of adoption, in which
we cry Abba, Father’ (Rom 8:15)”.17 The potential of the so-called ‘per-
son of baptism’ is fully realized and consummated in the eucharist: ac-
tualized, as it is, in the so called ‘eucharistic person’ (to use Zizioulas’s
idiom). The eucharistic event, taken as communion with the life-giv-
ing being of God, not only reveals but realizes the communional and
relational structure of personhood. “Man corresponds to his being cre-
ated in the ‘image of God’ to the extent he realizes his being as erotic
self-transcendence and self-offering, that is, to the extent his being cor-
responds to the personal (hypostatic) way of existence”18 — that is, let
us add, to the eucharistic way of existence. The Orthodox theology of
personhood implies an ontology of the personal way of being God is for
us and conversely. It is not to be regarded merely as a psychology or so-
ciology of Christian personhood. Moreover, for this reason the Ortho-
dox theology of personhood grounds itself not in a ‘revelational’ mod-
el of Christianity but in a ‘eucharistic’ or ‘liturgical’ model. This should
not mean that biblical foundations of the teaching on personhood are
marginalized, at least not so on purpose. Finally, divine-human and tri-
une structures of personhood are not merely projected (‘also’) through a
eucharistic ecclesiology of personhood. As we said, more is at stake. Ec-
clesiology, with its ‘heart’ in the eucharist, is the most central point of
reference for the theology of the person. This is so because the eucha-
rist (being the manifest life of God Himself) allows both the re-discov-
ery of the communional being of one’s otherwise naturalized and indi-
vidualized personhood (‘self ’) and, simultaneously, the experience of its
17 Let us note the coinciding here of biblical and ecclesial premises of the theology of
personhood attuned triadologically. Cf. John D. Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being”, in

idem, Being as Communion. Studies in Personhood and the Church, SVS Press, Crest-
wood – New York 1985, 56 n. 50.

potential for transformation through the deifying grace of the incarnate

Christ by the Spirit.
1.5. Ascetical ‘turn’. This invites what we might call the ascetical
‘turn’. The neo-patristic turn of Orthodox theology, as was said, resulted
in a striving to overcome essentialist, rationalistic and moralistic encap-
sulations of the ‘encounter event’ with the person of the incarnate Christ
in the eucharist. This led to a re-conceptualization of the understanding
of the nature of ‘asceticism’. Ascesis is not just a rigorous execution of
moral norms connected to biblical precepts. Much more, it is a change
of our way of existence: a fundamental change of mind and heart (meta-
noia) in terms of discovering life for others as the ascetic life proper:
ideally, without the pitfall of thus neglecting one’s irreducible subjectiv-
ity and personal worth (notwithstanding one’s most concrete sensitiv-
ities, talents and idiosyncrasies: of course, this is diametrically oppo-
site to the affirmation of traits of eccentric sinfulness). This coincides
with rediscovering the way of personhood — the communal-relational
and ecclesial ‘essence’ of being a human being properly. By discovering
the spiritual movements of personhood as relational movements of God
‘with’ us and of God ‘within’ us, we – in fact – rediscover what is offered
in the ecclesial and eucharistic habitus of our personal transformation.
Since both (movements of personhood and movements of the eucha-
ristic event) are complementary as actions of being-for-another. Ascetic
life, then, is a life of true (self)discovery, in and by our life in the Church,
of a living triune personal God — a God incarnate, sacrificial and res-
urrected. Repentance or metanoia (lit. change of mind) is not merely a
moral decision executed through a moralistically preset protocol. It is a
willed effect – and a willed cause as well – of our in-ecclesialization. That
is, repentance regarded spiritually, entails a change of our way of being
according to the way of being of a personal, communional and loving
God sacrificing all that is His for the life of others. The following words
by Zizioulas may be understood as an interpretation of asceticism prop-
er, too, and as a corrective to aberrant views of it: “This way of being is
not a moral attainment, something that man accomplishes. It is a way of
relationship with the world, with other people and with God, an event
of communion, and that is why it cannot be realized as the achievement
of an individual, but only as an ecclesial fact”.19 Hence Orthodox ascet-
19 John D. Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being”, 15.
icism (including its mystical texture and its apophatic attitude) is not a
remote exotic idiosyncrasy modo Oriente. It is a deeply concrete, real-
istic and socio-historically relevant manifestation of the quest for dei-
fied personhood in an ecclesial Christ by the Spirit. Such a view of as-
cetical effort entails primarily the transformative effects of the Church
event viewed eucharistically. Putting it sharply, to live eucharistically is
ascesis par excellence.
A promising way to see the intertwining of these theological ‘turns’,
on one hand, with the conceptualization of personhood, on the other
hand, is by looking into what we call the model of personhood. As we
shall see, this model presupposes the liturgical or eucharistic model of
the Church as such.
2. Modelling personhood
One of the problems an unaccustomed reader of western provenance
might encounter when trying to assess the Orthodox currents of the
theology of personhood is that it is still not systematic enough. Anoth-
er considerable difficulty is terminology — imbued, as it is, with Greek
and Byzantine-Greek philosophical idioms. These are steeped in rather
abstruse technical discourse presupposing centuries of Eastern Ortho-
dox mediation and transformation of Aristotelian, Platonic and neo-
Platonic concepts (especially in and through intellectual cultures domi-
cile to Alexandria and Constantinople). We therefore propose to make
the necessary clarifications by offering a synthetic but simple model of
the newer Orthodox ‘ontology of personhood’. Again we assume that
the mentioned four theological authors – Lossky, Yannaras, Zizioulas,
Horuzhy – are in consensus on the basic features of the model. Cita-
tions from the respective four, on that level, affirm the general thrust of
this personalist current of theology. Of course, they do differ, at times
strikingly.
2.1. Person and personhood. The person, it is argued, is not to be
regarded merely as a highly important ‘part’ of the human being. It is
much more. Namely, it is the way our being is as such. As explained by
Zizioulas: “… from an adjunct to a being (a kind of mask) the person be-
comes the being itself and is simultaneously – a most significant point
– the constitutive element (the ‘principle’ or ‘cause’) of beings”.20 Hence,
20 John D. Zizioulas, op. cit, 39.
“To be and to be in relation become identical*”.21 Here we may observe

the ontological ‘turn’ in understanding personhood. Being and relation-
ship are necessarily wedded pre-conditions for the ontology of person-
hood. And, both are derived from the fact that we are image-bearers of
God, that is, of Christ. As stated by Yannaras: “The same possibility of
personal (hypostatic) existence God has stamped into human nature”.22
In the pre-Christian era personhood was viewed not as constitutive for
the being of humanity. At best it was attached to humanity superficially
as its social-cultural or psychological role, designated by the term proso-
pon (lit. meaning a ‘mask’: or, that which is a ‘face’ or towards the ‘face’).
The ontological revolution in understanding humanity was achieved by
viewing the prosopon as the hypostasis (lit. that which is under/hypo-
laying/stasis23 as the foundational or constitutive instance of a being).24
The hypostasis is what a being (a ‘nature’) constitutively is — most espe-
cially in terms of its unique irreducible particularity. Therefore “… na-
ture exists only ‘in persons’: both nature and persons are known only
through energies of nature which are always personal. The person is the
carrier (hypo-stasis) of energies of nature, which means that the way of
existence of nature is personal particularity*…”.25 By viewing the proso-
pon as hypostasis (and conversely), our ‘person’ gains ontological ‘con-
tent’. It evolves from mere ‘personality’ to personhood ontologically re-
garded. Importantly, not every unique particular being, i.e. hypostasis,
is simultaneously personal. Therefore, the point is made that the proso-
pon, i.e. what pertains to the personal, is the hypostasis of a human be-
ing. For this reason our way of being is determined by a prosopic hypos-
tasis (both a horse and a human being, to wit, are hypostases but only
the latter is a prosopon). Since the prosopon (again, lit. ‘what is towards
the face’) also implies being-towards-an-other, personhood implies not
only being but being as relationship. The hypostasis in the sense defined,
then, allows the human being to be (1) personal in its fundamental way
21 John D. Zizioulas, “Truth and Communion”, in idem, Being as Communion, 88.
22 Christos Yannaras, Elements of Faith, Edinburgh 1991 (= Hristos Janaras, Azbučnik
vere, 91).
23 Alternately: that which is under/hypo-carrying/stasis as the foundational or consti-
tutive instance of (a) being.

25 Christos Yannaras, Truth and Unity of the Church, Athens 1977 (= Hristos Janaras, Is-
tina i jedinstvo Crkve, 44, 53-55).

of being, and (2) to be a unique particularity in and by relating. Further-

more, this grants every human hypostasis to be an irreducible (3) identi-
ty. Since every hypostasis is a gift of God, this identity is bestowed with
(4) absolute value and, in principle, with absolute (5) freedom: “… the
authentic person, as absolute ontological freedom, must be ‘uncreated’,
that is unbounded by a ‘necessity’, including its own existence. […]. If
God does not exist, the person does not exist”.26 Lastly, the hypostasis
‘carries’ all that a man or woman is or may become: the whole of his or
her being, including its potential (dynamis) for all manner of develop-
ment. But it does so as a ‘prosopon’, that is, in a way of personhood. This
may be designated by stating that human nature is always already enhy-
postatized27. In our case, this means that a being is humanly personal if
‘carried’ from ‘within’28 by a hypo-stasis, a hypostasis which is not an ab-
stract given but a prosopon, to wit a concretely instantiated person. Of
course, one here needs to distinguish between ‘prosopon’ in the super-
ficial sense (a mere add-on, viz. theatric or social mask) and ‘prosopon’
in the substantial sense (an irreducible person). “We would”, says Yan-
naras, “[…] summarize the Orthodox ecclesial interpretation of the no-
tion according to the image by the following formulation: God has be-
stowed man with the gift to be a person (hypostasis), that is, to exist in
the same way (tropos) as God exists Himself ”.29
2.2. Image and likeness. The person proper (hypostasis as proso-
pon) is not to be conflated with the image of God in man (eikon tou
Theou), although they most intimately do implicate each other. “We
may say that the image is a divine seal, imprinted on the nature and
putting it into a personal relationship* with God”.30 The image of God
in man is conceptualized as (1) self-governance (autexousia) and as (2)
27 Excursus: Note on the patristic Christological roots of the term ‘enhypostatized’.
28 It is here important not to be misled by spatial metaphors which such verbiage does
evoke. Strictly speaking, the human person is not ‘within’ a hypostasis or conversely —
for, the hypostasis is the human person (viz. prosopon) and conversely. For the same rea-
son, ‘being-carried’ suggests not a metaphor of space locality (i.e. under vis-à-vis above;
within vis-à-vis outside etc) but, rather, signifies a conceptual reality in terms of desig-
nating an ontological modality (tropos, modus, way of existence).
vere, 90-91).
30 Vladimir Lossky, “Image and Likeness”, in idem, The Mystical Theology of the East-
ern Church, SVS Press, Crestwood – New York 1976, 127.

rational freedom of the will (freedom from and freedom for someone
or something). Since the human being is hypostatic this means that the
image as freedom (eleuthereia) is personal. That is to say, the image al-
ways belongs to someone in terms of personal responsibility. The im-
age, then, is hypostatic or simply personal. This allows for freedom to
be non-abstract and concrete. There is no person ‘in general’ and there
is no freedom ‘in abstracto’. If rational freedom and self-governance are
the formal conditions of the prosopic or hypostatic image of God in the
human being, then the likeness of that image to God is the essential con-
dition. For it is achieving the likeness (homoiosis) of the image of God to
God that makes the image actualized or properly energized. (Otherwise
it remains formally a potentiality or, in reality, a mere travesty.) This is
done by the free and willing ascetical acceptance of deifying grace (cha-
ris), which is communicated by the Spirit in and through the life with
Christ the God-Man in the Church. As underlined by Lossky: “Man cre-
ated ‘in the image’ is the person capable of manifesting God to the ex-
tent to which his nature allows itself to be penetrated by deifying grace*.
Thus the image – which is inalienable – can become similar or dissimilar,
to the extreme limits: that of union with God, when deified man shows
in himself by the grace of God what God is by nature, according to the
expression of Maximus the Confessor; or indeed that of the extremity
of falling-away…”.31 Hence, actualizing the image through likeness leads
to (3) deification of the human person (theosis) in cooperation (synen-
ergeia) with God. But this cooperation presupposes an ‘ontological’ lev-
el of the act of repentance. As stated by Horuzhy: “Repentance is syn-
ergy [with God] in the state of passion. That is the ‘starting’ or ‘negative’
activity of synergy which has for its goal the decomposition of the glob-
al this-worldly configuration [i.e. the fallen world’s configuration] of the
multitude of energies”.32 Let us note that another reason for using the
syntagm ‘ontology of personhood’ issues from the fact that personhood
is actualized through divine energies of the personal being of God. In
biblical terms, “… we all, with unveiled face (prosopo), beholding the
32 Sergei Horuzhy, Dyptichon on Silence. The Ascetical Teaching on Man in Theological
and Philosophical Light (in Russian), Centre for Psychology and Psychotherapy, Mos-
cow (¹1978) ²1991 (we refer to the Serbian translation = Sergej Horužij, Diptih o tihovan-
ju. Asketsko učenje o čoveku u bogoslovskom i filozofskom tumačenju, tr. M. Ivanović, Bri-
mo, Beograd 2002, 87 — original in Cyrillic).
glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness (ten auten eiko-
na metamorphoumetha) from one degree of glory to another; for this
comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2Cor 3:18).
2.3. Nature. Furthermore, the human being has a common nature
(physis) shared with others. Nature is what is (1) common, but (2) es-
sentially, to all humankind and what makes it specifically different from
all other kinds of being. That is to say, the human being is ‘part’ of na-
ture, but the nature of the human being is not identical to ‘nature’ as
such (physis, natura). Moreover, the nature of human nature is deter-
mined specifically by – personhood. As pointed out by Lossky: “Man is
not merely an individual of a particular nature, included in the generic
relationship of human nature to God the Creator of the whole cosmos,
but he is also […] a person not reducible* to common (or even individ-
ualized) attributes of the nature which he shares with other human in-
dividuals. Personhood belongs to every human being by virtue of a sin-
gular and unique relation to God who created him ‘in His image’”.33 It
is precisely the ‘prosopic’ or personal hypostasis which, by en-hyposta-
tizing human nature, prevents human nature being conceptualized as
‘bare’ (gymne): that is, prevents it from being ‘impersonal’. “This cre-
ated nature exists only* as the personal hypostasis of life…”.34 It is also
the agency which, in principle, prevents the human being from becom-
ing biologically or sociologically individualistic (atomon). “The crea-
ture, who is both ‘physical and hypostatic’ at the same time, is called
to realize his unity of nature as well as his true personal diversity by*
going in grace beyond the individual limits which divide nature and
tend to reduce persons to the level of the closed35 being of particular
substances”.36 Most importantly, the personal (or ‘prosopic’) hypostasis,
or the human person as image of God, allows humanity to be or become
free from fallen nature (2Pet 2:4), not necessarily without or against na-
ture. The reason for this lies in the fact that the personal hypostasis is
a divine-human structure. This is memorably underlined by Yannaras:
“The all-embracing power of eros, which is in opposition to the tendency
vere, 91).
35 An echo of this may be heard in the title of the study by Nikolaos Loudovikos, Closed
Spirituality and the Meaning of Self (in Greek), Ellinika Grammata, Athens 1999.
36 Vladimir Lossky, “The Theological Notion of the Human Person”, 122.
towards existential autonomous individuality as after the fall*, […] con-

tinues to preserve the image (eikon) of the triadic proto-image within
the limits of creation. […] it is the same loving power and all-embracing
drive that inspires both human eros and eros towards God”.37 This takes
us back to the theology of personhood proper.
2.4. Human image – divine image: ecclesial personhood in Trin-
itarian key. The human image is an ontological analogy of the image
of God. What God pre-eternally is in His being — man and woman are
invited to become by grace (inasmuch as divine blessing grants it [2Pet
1:3-4] and not without human effort [2Tim 4:7-8]). In other words, hu-
manity is called to re-appropriate the way the being of God is. This way
of being (tropos tes hyparxeos) is the way of personhood. What is more,
God and man are ‘mutual paradigms’ precisely by sharing personhood
which is given on both sides as the condition of the encounter event.
God is a (1) relational communion of (2) unique and particular Persons
(hypostases) sharing – ‘en-hypostatizing’ – one nature or divine being of
(3) love freely. Humanity, i.e. every concrete human being and human-
kind as an interpersonal body in communion is an image of that38. This
means that the image of God in man and woman, as was said, is an im-
age of the triune God (imago Dei is imago Trinitatis, and conversely).
That is why realizing and discovering the way of personhood coincides
with retrieving the Trinitarian and then Christological side of Ortho-
dox, note, ecclesial anthropology. Let us repeat the words of Zizioulas
in this context: “This way of being is not a moral attainment, something
that man accomplishes”. Metropolitan John of Pergamon warns us that
“It is a way of relationship* with the world, with other people and with
God, an event of communion, and that is why it cannot be realized as the
achievement of an individual, but only as an ecclesial fact”.39 This means
that the theology of personhood is a precondition for grounding eccle-
siology properly. In the event of eucharistic communion God is encoun-
tered as a triune communion of Persons, and we are united in Christ
by the Spirit and embraced by the Father. This demands that we open
ourselves for personhood as relational life for the other in pure self-sac-

38 Needless to say, humanity is a created agency. Hence imaging the divine is an ideal
realizable through ascetical liturgical and social ethical practice, by grace.

rificial love. What is more, according to the radical words of Yannaras,

“The image of the triadic Proto-Image is stamped during the creation of
the human being: the human being is created in order for the Church* to
be formed”,40 that is for loving personal communion with God.
2.5. Goals of personhood. The goal of this theological thrust of
thinking, then, coincides with articulating the goals of personhood
proper. These are the following: to regain likeness to God of the image-
bearing human person through (1) deification (theosis). Deification is
the apex of the process of making the personal image alike to the tri-
une God. “Deification, that which includes both ‘activity of heart’ and
‘activity of mind’, finally shows itself to be a biunal process of self-gath-
ering and grace-imbued self-transcendence of man”.41 Deification is
not a deontic moral ‘restitutio in integrum’. Rather, it is a dynamic and
non-predetermined ontological process. That is why Horuzhy adds that:
“Personhood is an ontological mission”. He strongly insists that “… the
human Person is not a developed ‘innate form’ but something essen-
tially other* and truly novel in relation to here-being as such; it is an
authentically different ontological horizon”.42 Furthermore, becoming
alike to God is very much alike to creating a work of (2) art: freely cre-
ating something or someone anew in a process where interaction with
the resurrected and glorified Other, and others, is a necessary precon-
dition for success. Due to its ascetical and liturgical dimension this pro-
cess strongly implies an interpersonal (3) spiritual culture of co-creating,
nothing less than what is revealed (and what is yet to be revealed) in the
glorified human nature of the Logos incarnate — Jesus Christ, in whom
all things are recapitulated (Eph 1:10, 22), not ‘finished off ’ but begotten,
allowing for the eschatological prospect of creating and co-creating a
new being in a ‘cosmic’ sense: from ‘glory to glory’ (2Cor 3:18) — by the
Spirit in the name of the Father. In fact, Horuzhy distinguishes between
a ‘fore-person’ and ‘person proper’. The latter finds its consummation in
the eschatological event. Therefore, according to Horuzhy, personhood
is here already, but not yet (to put it in Oscar Cullman’s terms). Hence
“Man himself is defined as something which carries within itself only
40 Christos Yannaras, Truth and Unity of the Church, Athens 1977 (= Hristos Janaras,
Istina i jedinstvo Crkve, 21).

41 Sergei Horuzhy, Dyptichon on Silence, Moscow 1991 (= Sergej Horužij, Diptih o ti-
hovanju, 40).
42 Sergei Horuzhy = Sergej Horužij, op. cit., 90.
an ‘image and likeness’ of personal being – some uncompleted invest-

ment of its goal* – which is what we rather like to call the fore-person”.43
The aspect of creating a spiritual Christian culture,44 let us continue, de-
mands (4) growth not only of awareness of its meaning and potential but
also of (5) responsibility towards making this culture relevant for the do-
mains of social history — even in a ‘politicological’ sense. This means
that the theology of personhood is critical, engaged and obliged to make
its own en-culturation possible.
“... predestined to be conformed to the image (summorphous tes eiko-
nos) of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many
brethren” (Rom 8:29)
3. Transmission and development

The theology of personhood which has become one of the distinctive
features of Orthodox theology in the 20th century should be positioned
in relation to its primary context of reception and re-reception. We
shall place the model of personhood thereby presupposed into the ba-
sic frame of its critical development. Four main theologians, i.e. Lossky,
Yannaras, Zizioulas and Horuzhy, it could be safely said, do not diverge
in principle in relation to what personhood, image and likeness, human
nature and its goals are or should be. However, the following selected
specificities and differences should be noted.
3.1. Theoretical paradigms and markers of personhood
Vladimir Lossky is the spiritus rector of this personalist movement in
Orthodox anthropology. Christos Yannaras takes up all the major con-
ceptual and ideological suggestions offered by Lossky: the (1) Trinitari-
an and (2) theandrical grounding context of theology, (3) the awareness
of western intellectual challenges, the distinctions between (4) person
and nature, (5) essence and personalized energies of essence or nature,
and, in particular (6) the apophatic dimensions of divine-human com-
munion. As regards personhood, he accepts Lossky’s four markers of
personhood: (1) the hypostatic (= uniqueness), (2) the ecstatic (= free-
dom), (3) the relational (= being for the other) and (4) kenotic (= sacri-
43 Sergei Horuzhy = Sergej Horužij, op. cit., 17.
44 John D. Zizioulas, “Introduction: Communion and Otherness”, in idem, Commu-
nion and Otherness. Further studies in Personhood and the Church (ed. P. McPartlan), T
& T Clark, Edinburgh 2006, 10.
ficiality) modes of the person transcending its given and fallen nature.
However, ecstasis (ekstasis) is conceptually synthesized as (1) eros, and
relationality is meticulously explicated in categories of (2) enpersonal-
ized energies of human nature ‘ecstasizing’ erotically and inviting com-
munion. He says much more on the triune aspect of the image as well,
not refraining from identifying the human image – analogically – as
image of the Trinity. Furthermore, he suggests that the image of God
in man or women is the image of the Church potentially. Therefore the
imago Dei is in fact (3) imago Trinitatis and imago Ecclesiae. He also
radicalizes Lossky’s critique of the Latin and modern West, at moments
reaching an irrevocable ideological negation of things western.
John Zizioulas does have a fundamental debt to both. However, he is
willing to acknowledge Yannaras rather than Lossky, whom he suspects
of jeopardizing the interpersonal moment in divine-human communion
by releasing the Triunity of divine Persons into a transpersonal apophat-
ic of ‘triadicity’. This explains Zizioulas’s reserve not only to Lossky, but
towards Dionysius the Areopagite (fl. c. 500), and also one of the rea-
sons for his reluctance to endorse Palamite theology more explicitly. He
makes his turn to the apostolic45 and Cappadocian church fathers and to
Maximus the Confessor ([580–662] the latter features prominently in ear-
ly Yannaras as well). In fact, he tries to overcome the top-to-bottom ap-
proach (of Lossky) by commencing from the ecclesial presuppositions of
personhood (thus the ‘vertical’ conception of personhood, i.e. God + hu-
manity, is interiorized and historicized from within ecclesial thinking as
it springs fort from tradition [paradosis]). Zizioulas criticizes Yannaras,
too, for ‘flirting’ with Heideggerean ontology (and borrows some parts of
his criticism from Emmanuel Levinas46) viz. the danger of temporalizing
God, ontologizing death, and projecting Trinitarian description through
‘panoramic’ ontology at the expense of a more traditional understanding
(which he, perhaps problematically, binds to the idea of ‘monarchy’ of the
Father) etc.47 Zizioulas is more attentive to the (1) ecclesial and (2) eucha-
45 An exemplary instance is his doctoral dissertation. It draws upon the genius of Igna-
tius of Antioch as it reconstructs primordial ecclesial, eucharistic and episcopal horizons
of theology of the early Church; vide: John D. Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The
Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop during the First Three Centuries
(the original appeared in Greek 1965), Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline MA 2001.
46 John D. Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being”, 44 n. 40.
47 It seems that Zizioulas is not entirely fair to Yannarasean readings of Heidegger, who
may be usefully introduced into the debate. Moreover, Yannaras’s, say, ‘theo-ontology’ or
ristic identity of personhood and conversely (in relation to both Lossky

and Yannaras) and his (3) relational ontology of sameness vis-à-vis oth-
erness is specifically characteristic as well (although Yannaras develops a
theology of otherness as well, but so does Horuzhy). He is to be credited
for shedding important light on the fact that it is (4) the prosopon which is
the foundation of being and hence for the ‘prosopic’ or ‘personalistic’ in-
terpretation of the hypostasis. The prosopic re-interpretation of the hypos-
tasis is articulated through (5) the opposition of the ‘biological’ and ‘eccle-
sial’ or ‘eucharistic’ type of hypostasis.48
Lossky belongs to the strand of Orthodox anthropological person-
alism more focused on the doctrine of hypostatic transformational en-
ergies of God. Yannaras and Zizioulas belong to the strand of the same
personalist current or movement more focused, however, on the proso-
pon, particularly in regard to placing it within a more explicit eccle-
siology. Both Yannaras and Zizioulas develop further the third major
distinction underpinning the recent Orthodox theology of personhood
and Christological anthropology. Namely, next to (1) the person/nature
and (2) essence/energy distinctions they articulate (c) the difference be-
tween the way of being (tropos tes hyparxeos) and the essence of being
(logos tes ousias). This distinction is not unknown to Lossky, and Horu-
zhy is fully aware of it as well. Sergei Horuzhy distinguishes himself by
developing his theology of personhood, and the respective anthropol-
ogy, from philosophical presuppositions of phenomenological descrip-
tion of the human existential condition in regard to spiritual experi-
ence of transformation consequent to union with Christ by the Spirit.
He analyses consequences for personhood in cases when this experi-
ence is lacking and when it is ascetically acquired. In doing so he re-
fers to Heidegger’s analysis of Dasein and his critique of ‘this-worldli-
ness’, as points of departure for reflection. At the same time Horuzhy
demonstrates the perspective of Orthodox personalist anthropology
as the necessary complement to philosophical anthropology per se. By
combining the horizons of the philosophy of Martin Heidegger (1889–
1976) and theology of Gregory Palamas (1296–1359) he tries to show the
philosophical potential of Orthodox theology. This takes him back to
‘theo-prosopology’ is a powerful tool for overcoming problematic aspects of Heidegger-

ean analyses of Dasein and time ecstasy.
48 John D. Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being”, 52-53.
Lossky and simultaneously beyond Lossky, for his (1) method of phe-
nomenological description of personhood is fruitfully innovative and
different from that of Lossky (for instance in thematizing the aesthet-
ic consequences of personhood synergetically regarded). He displays a
fully fledged theory of (2) synergetic ontology of personhood and a con-
ception of (3) theurgy concepualized as the cooperation with God in
universalizing the activity of the Church cosmically. This is his specif-
ic contribution (although he does shy away from acknowledging Bul-
gakov on the theurgic point). Horuzhy’s contribution is acutely person-
alist yet committed strongly to the energetic and synergetic sides of
human ascetical activity. He does justice to Gregory Palamas without
ensnaring himself in Lossky’s overly apophatic emphasis. He seems to
make peace between what we could call the ‘energological’ and ‘pro-
sopological’ strands of personalistic Orthodox anthropology. Like the
others, he remains strict in the critique of the sophiological strand (be-
ing very reserved towards pantheistic tendencies of sophiological49 sub-
stantialist ‘in-rooting’ [Russ. ukornyenie] of the divine into the world).
Orthodox theology of personhood thus displays at least three
strands of one major movement: the (1) sophiological,50 (2) energolog-
ical and (3) prosopological strands. Of course, there are more lines to
the movement, and the borders between most of them overlap to a de-
gree at certain levels. The four authors mentioned represent two gen-
erations of the transmission process in the 20th century, with Lossky
belonging to the first (terminus a quo in the 30s and 40s) and Yan-
naras, Zizioulas, Horuzhy belonging to the second (terminus a quo
in the 60s and 70s). The third generation of theologians made its ap-
pearance in the 90s. They made their marks by trying to overcome, or
signal, neuralgic theoretical points of the newer Orthodox movement
for personhood. Nikolaos Loudovikos (*1959)51 and Aristotle Papan-
49 Sergei Horuzhy, Dyptichon on Silence, Moscow 1991 (= Sergej Horužij, Diptih o ti-
hovanju, 129-133).
50 Hence the early ‘sophiological’ current of thought is not to be counter-distinguished
from a supposedly later ‘personalist’ current. Both are anchored in theologically under-
standing personhood as one of the eminent characteristics of Orthodox theology per se.
It is better to think of neo-sophiological, post-sophiological and non-sophiological per-
sonalist tendencies within Orthodoxy.
51 Especially relevant for comprehensive insight into the position of Loudovikos on Or-
thodox theology of personhood, grounded in his readings of Maximus the Confessor, are
the following works: idem, Eucharistic Ontology, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, Brookline,
ikolaou (*1976)52, alongside distinguished others, should be noted as

thinkers of the latest generation who venture into relevant apprais-
als of the movement. (Let us add that these two thinkers, to an argu-
able extent, differ in their answers regarding the question of what is a
‘person’ and-or ‘human being’ in Christ, at least in terms of their eval-
uation of the position of Christos Yannaras and, especially, John D.
Zizioulas53).
III. Critical assessment

1. Consequences
What are the positive contributions of this theology of personhood to
contemporary theoretical interests and critical tasks? How does this leg-
acy bear upon the fields of epistemology, ontology, mediation of philos-
ophy and theology, theology proper and ethics? If we are excused for
generalizing, then this is what might be said.
1.1. Epistemology. Truth is a function of a personal and interper-
sonal way of being of a being (to on). That is why, and that is how truth
becomes existentially relevant. This is intended by conceptualizing be-
ing as hypostatic and hypostasis as ‘prosopic’, i.e. as personal. “The per-
son is no longer an adjunct to being, a category which we add54 to a con-
crete hypostasis. It is itself the hypostasis of being”.55 In the contrary case,
namely when being is regarded as absolute and non-personal, or, when
personhood is seen as a secondary ‘appendix’ to being, then, truth be-
comes objectified within the conceptual logic of impersonal abstracta,
which in turn are seen as descriptions correspondent to a non-person-
MA 2010, ch. 2; idem, Closed Spirituality and the Meaning of the Self (in Greek), Ellini-
ka Grammata, Athens 1999, 189-204; idem, Terrors of the Person and the Ordeals of Love
(in Greek), Armos, Athens 2009, 19-31. Cf. Nikolaos Loudovikos, “Hell and Heaven, Na-
ture and Person. Chr. Yannaras, D. Stăniloae and Maximus the Confessor”, Internation-
al Journal of Orthodox Theology 5:1 (2014) 17 n. 13.
52 The historical awareness, immanent immersion and responsibility regarding the here-
in thematized topic is brought to light well and helpfully in Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Per-
sonhood and Its Exponents in Twentieth-Century Orthodox Theology”, in: M. B. Cun-
ningham and E. Theokritoff (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Orthodox Christian
Theology, CUP, Cambridge 2008, 232-245.
53 More on this in what follows in III.2.3.
54 Or, alternately, a category which we detract, take away or, as it were, ‘peel off ’ of being,
as is the case in metaphysical abstraction and speculative inference to absolute being (BL).
al, necessary, indifferent being in itself (on he on). The truth of person-
hood is then reduced (equally so in various domains: from epistemolo-
gy to sociology). Zizioulas expresses the main insight well: “Entities no
longer trace their being to being itself—that is, being is not an absolute
category in itself—but to the person, to precisely that which constitutes
being, that is allows entities to be entities”.56 More still, these Orthodox
thinkers argue that truth is an intrinsic extension of experiential know-
ing of the event of participation in interpersonal energetic presences
of our others (the latter taken as beings in communion). For Florovsky
(and by transitivity for the here chosen four Orthodox personalist theo-
logians), “Truth makes itself accessible to thought only through witness.
Further, since Truth is personal (it is Christ Himself, Jn 14:6), witness
to Truth must also be personal, i.e. provided by witnesses, and these
testes Veritatis, are none other than the Church Fathers”.57 Truth is not
(not only, nor primarily) an analytical ‘adequatio’ of concept and thing,
nor merely a coherent logic of formal statements etc, but consequent to
experiencing the way of being which, by definition, is the way of per-
sonhood (= free transcendence of ‘being’ by persons being for others).
Let us note that we now may observe how the ‘apophatic turn’ (II 1.2)
and theology of personhood converge, inasmuch as both are meta-onti-
cal and meta-logical in their grounding. As Yannaras explains: “Before
anything else apophatism represents an attitude towards knowledge and
towards making knowledge true. It represents a negation of ‘intellectu-
al idols’, a negation of psychological strongholds of egocentric security
and emotional self-protection furnished by rationalist propositions”.58
All things considered, this personalist epistemology leads to a critique
of naturalized epistemology in favour of an existential and spiritual re-
assessment of the latter.
1.2. Metaphysics and ontology. If it can be demonstrated, as far as
human reality is concerned, that there is no being ‘outside’ the event of
persons in communion (which entails radical freedom, openness and
incessant surges of possibilities of meaning), if being is ‘enhypostatized’
primordially, if being is – for lack of a better word – ‘a priori’ inter-per-
57 Sergei Horuzhy, “Neo-Patristic Synthesis and Russian Philosophy”, St. Vladimir’s
Theological Quarterly 44:3-4 (2000) 318.

sonal and communional: if an uncreated agency is involved ‘in person’,

and committed to Cross and incarnation in history, then ‘ontotheol-
ogical’ approaches to the event of being, freedom and openness need to
be re-examined. In other words, metaphysical ‘ontotheology’59 beclouds
the event of being (that is, of existence) by conflating being with ‘a’ log-
ically objectified being: one or many, or all of beings (which it may call
‘god’) and-or with an abstract overall structure of the ‘whole’ of being
(which it may call ‘god’). Yet, as is argued in the newer Orthodox per-
sonalism, the event of being transpires within the horizons of the inter-
personal way of being of being. This in turn acutely highlights the said
problem. Some of the representatives, more or less explicitly, draw near
to Heideggerean insights as regards this point. Namely, ‘ontotheological’
descriptions of existence lose sight of the crucial difference60 between be-
ing (as event, as gift, as wonderment, as radical unconcealment of real-
ity, meaning and possibility, or as radical questioning etc) and ‘a’ being
(a mere objectum or assemblage of the same, which may be conceptual-
ized as the ‘whole’ and-or as the ‘highest’ being: an absolute). According-
59 “Metaphysics does both. It gathers beings together to consider them ‘as a whole’. It re-
gards being as the ‘ground’ of beings: «Ontology and theology are ‘-logies’ because they
get to the bottom (ergründen) of beings as such and ground (begründen) them as a whole
(im Ganzen, lit. ‘in the whole’)» (ID, 56/59). Hence Hegel called metaphysics ‘logic’; it is
Onto-Theo-Logik. How does God become a being, the highest entity, rather than simply
Sein, ‘being’? Being and beings are distinct but inseparable. Being ‘grounds (gründet)’ be-
ings, and conversely beings ‘beground (begründen)’ being. But beings can beground be-
ing only in the form of a single supreme being, a cause that is causa sui, ‘cause of itself ’:
«This is the appropriate name for the god of philosophy*. Man cannot pray to this god,
nor offer sacrifices to him. Man cannot fall to his knees in awe before the causa sui […]»
(ID, 70/72). Heidegger thinks that «god-less thinking», in rejecting this god of philoso-
phy, is «perhaps closer to the divine god» (ID, 71/72): «the ontotheological character of
metaphysics has become questionable for thinking, not on the basis of any atheism, but
from the experience of a thinking which has seen in onto-theo-logy the still unthought
unity of the essence of metaphysics» (ID, 51/55). In thinking about this unity, and about
the difference that metaphysics discerns only hazily, Heidegger goes beyond metaphys-
ics”. Vide: Michael Inwood, “Ontotheology”, in: A Heidegger Dictionary, Blackwell Pub-
lishers, Oxford 1999, 149-150: 150 (ID = M. Heidegger, Identität und Differenz, Pfullingen,
Neske 1957 = idem, Identity and Difference, tr. J. Stambaugh, Harper & Row, NY 1969 [cf.
especially: “The Onto-Theo-Logical Constitution of Metaphysics”, 42-74 i.e. Heidegger’s
interpretive exposition of Hegel’s Science of Logic, given on 24 Feb 1957] BL).
60 According to Heidegger: “What differs shows itself as the Being of beings in gener-
al, and as Being of beings in the Highest. […]. … the thinking of metaphysics remains
involved in the difference which as such is unthought*…”, cf. idem, Identity and Differ-
ence, NY 1969, 70-71.
ly, the newer Orthodox theologians allow for a revision of this tradition-
al type of metaphysical ontology. They are informed by the Heideggerean
type of critique. However, they suggest that ‘ontotheological’ approaches
to being need to shift from their traditional metaphysical and essential-
ist modes (as found in Aristotle, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel etc) into a perspec-
tive offered by the post-metaphysical ontology of concrete personhood
(which is where they depart from Heidegger at the same time). Or, more
exactly, the ontology of concrete personhood is transposed into a theol-
ogy of personhood taken to be the ontology proper. This may be re-stat-
ed in comparison to modern speculative metaphysics as well. Namely, if
the ontological reality of the human person, on the level of ‘structure’, is
fundamentally determined by the image of the triune God, and if the
reality of the human person (created, contingent and — fallen), on the
level of ‘content’, ultimately, is determined by the capacity of reception
of (and response to) divine energies or sanctifying grace: as of pure in-
calculable61 gift,62 then the immanentist ontology of the self-absolutized
‘subject’ (despite or because of it voracious interiorization of what is di-
vine [an act which, ultimately, collapses the distinction between divine
– uncreated and human – created]), especially as conceived by the mod-
ern tradition of philosophy of consciousness,63 needs to be discarded for
it is inadequate in regard to understanding what truly comes to pass in
the salvific drama of human personhood in and for Christ. Let us note
that here, too, we may observe how the ‘apophatic turn’ (II 1.2) and the-
ology of personhood converge, inasmuch as speculative ontology is de-
constructed by displaying the precedence and irreducibility of personal
relationality (of each iconic concretum) as opposed to the speculative all-
absorbing ‘Subjectum’ or ‘Absolute’. The said relationality involves an un-
foreclosed dialogue of the created and the uncreated Other (a dialogue
grounded in the glorified Body of the Godman Jesus Christ: that is, in
the Church) addressing us as irreducible persons of unfathomable scope
61 This in itself precludes a ‘calculus’ of ‘absolute knowing’ (viz. speculative epistemol-
ogy) and-or boundless ‘self-inflation’ of the subject (viz. speculative theology).

62 Of course, notwithstanding the reception of the plethora of riches given by the living
God to his Church (e.g. revealed truths, scriptures, articles of faith, doctrine, sacraments,
liturgical activity, theologoumena, Christian arts and crafts, Christian social forms and
practices of polity etc). These themselves, in turn, presuppose grace and are manifesta-
tions of it, both at the same time.
63 For instance, the Fichtean absolute Ego and-or the Hegelian speculative Subject or
dialectical Absolute.
and absolute worth, through unique acts of experiential instancing of di-

vine grace — this side of mediations serving an abstract Absolute, as of
the ‘god’ of speculative64 philosophers. This opens radically the closed
system of speculative metaphysics and brings into question its teleology,
especially its functionalist and totally historicized conception of ‘person-
hood’ (viz. the ablation of the person in and through an ultimately non-
personal or meta-personal Absolute [‘Subject’]). All in all, a critique of
the dialectics of the speculative ‘Subject’65 is put in motion in favour of
existential and phenomenological descriptions of relational inter-subjec-
tivity, the latter placed on the ontological plane of divine-human inter-
communion, established from within concrete histories of an embod-
ied historical Church. This marks a conditional congruence of Orthodox
theology of personhood with certain theoretical and social sensitivities
of postmodernity.
1.3. Philosophy in and for theology. Another prominent aspect
of the theology of personhood explicated so far is the re-discovery of
philosophical potentials of Orthodox theology. What is innovative is the
way the four paradigmatic thinkers, by means of their theologizing, of-
fer theoretical ‘megaphones’ for voicing the messages of the fathers of
the Church in registers attuned to contemporary theoretical, i.e. philo-
sophical discourse. Not only do they ‘understand’ modern philosophy
but they simultaneously offer means for critical deconstruction of it
(where they find this may be needed and-or possible). Let us note that
we now may observe how the ‘neo-patristic turn’ (II 1.1) and theology
of personhood converge, inasmuch as the tradition of Christianizing
‘Hellenism’ becomes transposed – and re-actualized – through their at-
tempted Christianization of contemporary philosophical or ideological
mindsets. On the whole, the approach is inclusive to philosophy in gen-
eral but critically discerning (diakrisis) at the same time. Another in-
valuable consequence of this is the overall gain for theology. Critical di-
alogue within a philosophical context serves the missiological function
of theology. That is to say, by engaging with philosophy as disciplined
64 Of course, not all philosophers subscribe to the ‘god of (speculative) philosophers’.
65 Needless to say, a detailed exposition of the arguments – or implicative critical po-
tentials – proffered by the newer Orthodox theological personalism against a position
of modern speculative idealism is beyond the scope of this paper. Other philosophical
positions may also be tackled critically by it. As is the case, for instance, with more con-
temporary Nietzschean and Heideggerean descriptions of the ‘I’ or ‘self ’, etc.
discourse, the universal and self-critical dimensions of philosophy (phi-

losophy, to wit, as defaulted critical praxis of the human mind) are inte-
grated into the Church via theology. And conversely, thereby theology
is strengthened discursively and made competent in the fields of phil-
osophical enquiry as well. The church message is enabled to become
communicable beyond the registers of idiosyncratic church language.
At a level, the church message is aligned to conceptual frames and strin-
gent rules posited by human reasoning in itself (viz. philosophy), not-
withstanding a new light given to old questions and problems (e.g. what
is a human being? what is implied in being a true person? etc) or new in-
sights being reported in philosophically clear and convincing terms (e.g.
why personhood cannot be satisfactorily grounded in terms of a self-
enclosed secular and-or natural reality, etc). In other words, due to this,
theological truths as disclosed within the Church are presented and de-
fended as plausible philosophical premises as well.
1.4. Theologia. The theology of personhood is not to be under-
stood as a partial ‘reconstruction’ of Orthodox theology. It is rather a
new way of theology itself: vividly marked by a post-apologetic and
non-confessionalist attitude. Theology is defended not by recursive
confessional deductions, but by witnessing authentic as much as sal-
vific and beatific prospects for persons in communion with Christ by
the Spirit.66 It is Yannaras and Zizioulas in particular who strikingly
potentialize integration, if not identification, of participation in com-
munion with ‘knowledge’ (of truth). Their aim is to demonstrate that
eucharistic participation and theological knowing coincide. They in-
sist on the primacy of experience and of the communion event over
epistemic ‘revelation’. As stressed by Zizioulas: “… the life of commu-
nion with God, such as exists within the Trinity is actualized within the
members of the eucharistic community”.67 What is more: “The life of
the eucharist is the life of God Himself ”.68 An overcoming of the ‘reve-
latory model’ of the Church in the name of the ‘liturgical-eucharistic’
model of the Church is thereby proposed.69 They insist on a most liter-
66 Cf. John Zizioulas, “Ecumenical Dimensions of Orthodox Theological Education”, 33-40.
67 John D. Zizioulas, “Truth and Communion”, 81.
68 Ibid.
69 Gerhard Liedke, “The Challenge of the Church to Science and Theology”, in: J. M.
Mangnum (ed.) The New Faith-Science Debate, Fortress Press, Minneapolis – WCC Pub-
lications, Geneva 1989, 165.
al integration of the life of the triune God with ecclesial practice.70 This
becomes the control instance for ‘theology’ which is thus deconstruct-
ed and in fact ‘liberated’ from its position of a priori intellectual dom-
inance over the Church event: “… ecclesial being is bound to the very
being of God. From the fact that a human being is a member of the
Church, he becomes an ‘image of God’, he exists as God Himself exists,
he takes on God’s ‘way of being’”.71 Their integration of the ontology of
triune personhood with ontology of divine-human communion with-
in the context of ecclesiology, thus, allows for and leads to understand-
ing that the primary value of knowing is appropriated as a function of
salvation. In other words, knowledge is ontologically and existentially
potentialized as a dynamic function of salvific communion with God.
It is for these reasons that they introduce Trinitarian thought in a key
of dynamic personhood. It serves as the regulative ‘norm’ for other do-
mains of theology, often clogged up with static, essentialist and legalis-
tic understandings of both God and man. Let us note that now we may
observe how the ‘Trinitarian’ (II 1.3) and ‘eucharistic’ (II 1.4) turns con-
verge with the theology of personhood, inasmuch as the triune way
of being of God is reflected as the way of being of the human being
living eucharistically in and as the Church. In the name of the Father,
Christ eucharistically communes with us inter-personally by the Spir-
it: in free ecstatic relationality and pure self-sacrificial (kenotic) love
of his others as brothers and sisters by grace. As powerfully stated by
Zizioulas: “Jesus Christ does not justify the title Saviour because he
brings the world a beautiful revelation, a sublime teaching about the
person, but because He realizes in history the very reality of the per-
son and makes it the basis and ‘hypostasis’72 of the person for every*
man”.73 All things considered, anthropology is founded personalisti-
cally, and is futurative in an eschatological key. Which is to say, with
70 Cf. Alan Torrance’s very appreciative yet lucidly critical account: “Triune Personhood.
John Zizioulas”, in idem, Persons in Communion. An Essay on Trinitarian Description and
Human Participation, T & T Clark, Edinburgh 1996, 287 et passim.
72 Let us not forget in this context that one meaning of the Old Greek term hypostasis
is ‘that which lies underneath’ or ‘the under-laying thing’ or ‘the under-carrying thing’.
When the under-laying ‘thing’ is the Person of the Son of God, Jesus Christ — implica-
tions are nothing less than revolutionary (BL).
Zizioulas,74 that the human being is that which it is yet to become in

Christ as of Christ’s Kingdom (Jn 3:1; Lk 23:42; Heb 2:7 etc) — and,
that being is determined by the end (telos) it was created for through
Christ75 who is (and ever was) the Beginning and the End76 of all things:
created not by its past regarded deterministically (hence, not by blind
causes in the past, nor by irrevocable consequences of causes: ultimate-
ly, not by sin and the fall). And, since the person is a divine-human
structure, intoned eschatologically, this means that anthropology is re-
quired to integrate a ‘pneumatic’ Christology and ‘pneumatic’ ecclesi-
ology. For it is by the Spirit (an opening and introductive agency par
excellence) that ‘persons’ realize their movement from biological indi-
vidual conglomerates (and from being encased in effects of the past) to
communional personhood (to being open by the future in Christ and
for it) in which our being is realized in and through ‘being for others’,77
as is the case with the triune God. These are amongst the more impor-
tant meanings implied by Yannaras’s formulation of the ‘ethos of Trini-
tarian communion’ as the condition of the properly Christian meaning
of the ‘event of the holy’ (Heilsgeschehen).
1.5. Ethics. One major consequence of the theology of personhood,
on the level of ethics, is that sin is understood not as an immoral occur-
rence per se. Rather, it is conceived as an ontological event. As states for
instance Yannaras: “This fall from the person (to prosopo) into the indi-
vidual (to atomo), from loving communion to autonomic individuality
is the existential content of the sin (hamartias) of man, that is, his failure
in relation to his existential truth and authenticity”.78 In other words, sin
74 John D. Zizioulas, Remembering the Future: An Eschatological Ontology, T & T Clark

Ltd., Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, Edinburgh (forthcoming).
75 “For in him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, […]
— all things were created through him and for him” (Col 1:16).
76 “I am the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end”
(Rev 22:13).
77 Actually, being for others here coincides with being for Christ, i.e. with a thirsting
Christ-bound eros which in loving others loves Christ, and conversely. For instance, such
a being-for-an-other is indicated in the cry Maranatha! (“Our Lord, come!” 1Cor 16:22).
(Of course, this follows if we leave aside the perfective past sense of the term, and opt
for the futurative vocative sense of the same Aramaic expression, which in fact was fa-
voured in eucharistic dialogues of the early Church).
78 Christos Yannaras, Truth and Unity of the Church, Athens 1977 (= Hristos Janaras,
Istina i jedinstvo Crkve, 22).

implies a failure to be in accord to the proper way of being,79 the latter re-
vealed as the way of Christ or the communional and sacrificial way of the
Church of Christ. Let us note that we now may observe how the ‘asceti-
cal turn’ (II 1.5) and theology of personhood converge, inasmuch as the
re-conceptualization of ascetical endeavour demands a re-structuring of
one’s way of being into a mode of ecclesial personhood. Ethics is pre-
opened by ecclesial-communional ethos: especially by the eucharistic
way of being of the Church community, where substantial transforma-
tions of the whole human being come to pass, through dynamics of sac-
ramental grace. The fulfillment of biblically secured moral precepts fol-
lows this movement but does not precondition it, nor can it supplant it.80
Ethics is released from a self-sufficient and autonomist moral grounding
as of the moral law regarded formalistically. Another quintessentially im-
portant consequence, apart from the meta-moralistic gain mentioned, is
the defense of the absolute value of the human person in view of its di-
vine-human potential and calling. We can only but most briefly add that
this defense of divine-human status of personhood has repercussions in
the domains of bioethics (viz. genetic engineering, euthanasia, abortion,
suicide etc), human rights (viz. various types of instrumentalization of
the human person for ends of profit, submission, technocratic and cor-
poratist control etc), rights of biospheric nature (viz. the desacralization
and ‘rape of nature’ – since nature is also called to commune with God in
Christ through our humanity in Christ [Rom 8:19-22], etc) and in terms
of culture-creativity. As regards the latter, again, the ethical encompass-
es not only bringing oneself to an other in a morally acceptable form,
but creating something good and beautiful in the world for one’s other:81
one’s ecclesial personhood to begin with.
2. Problems and issues

As regards critical re-evaluation of the movement, several major points
of entry for criticism have appeared. If we leave aside the inner debate
between the four (particularly Zizioulas versus Yannaras and Lossky)
79 Interestingly, this is precisely Yannaras’s criterion for distinguishing authentic eccle-

sial community from heresy and heretical modes of the para-ecclesial.
80 Let us view this from another angle: in the eyes of Christ, it is the humble sinner who
– by selflessly reaching-out to God – stands as first in the ecclesial assembly (for the mor-
ally self-sufficient and self-content members are not really ‘reaching-out’).
81 John D. Zizioulas, “Introduction: Communion and Otherness”, 10.
and consider other authors immersed in this movement of theological

thought, notably those of the third generation of re-reception, then the
following critical considerations should be noted.
2.1. A monism in things plural? First it seems that the whole par-
adigm of neo-patristic synthesis is being currently re-evaluated, not-
withstanding its main Florovskian precepts. This is not conceptual-
ized in terms of discarding the paradigm in toto. It is rather a process
of reconsidering some of its fundamental postulates, premises and con-
cepts (e.g. ‘experience’ in and of Christ, ‘mind’ of the ‘fathers’, spiritual
‘vision’82 etc). One objection, attuned to more reintroduction of biblica
patristica, raises the question of insufficient exploration of biblical prem-
ises for the statements forwarded by the newer neo-patristic theology
of personhood. The argument pivots on asking whether the statements
truly complement (i.e integrate) the biblical foundations of Orthodox
theology. A corollary to that, conversely, is to re-question the status and
hermeneutical orientation of biblical studies in Orthodox theology. By
transitivity, as a second type of objection, this argument is transposed
to ask whether the Church fathers themselves offer biblical back-up for
the conclusions drawn, i.e. to what extent and – if so – under what sort
of hermeneutical ‘regime’? The latter question, for example, is utilized
in questioning the claim that Trinitarian groundings of human person-
hood are to be abundantly, or properly found, say, in the theologoumena
of the Cappadocian fathers, particularly in regard to the respective bib-
lical ‘evidence’ (if yes, then in what sense should these statements be un-
derstood and developed). The next objection, from the here chosen set,
targets the ‘sweeping’ effects of the synthetic method used in neo-patris-
tic theological reflection, thus voicing concerns against a possible ‘gen-
eralizing’ of super-complex, concrete and contextually intricate realities
in the patristic realms of ecclesial thought.83 Another objection relates to
82 The following paper by John Behr is representative in this regard: idem, “Passing Be-
yond the Neo-Patristic Synthesis” = “Nadilaženje neopatrističke sinteze”, tr. Z. Jovanović,

Bogoslovlje 70:1 (2011) 44-56. This is a presentation he gave at the Faculty of Orthodox
Theology in the University of Belgrade on 14 Oct 2010 (n. the same paper, with a slight-
ly different title, was first presented 3-6 Jun 2010 at the Theological Academy in Volos,
Greece at the respective patrological conference). Behr states (op. cit., 46 n. 1) that his
paragraphs of critique both of Bulgakov and of Florovsky are considerably indebted to
Brandon Gallaher’s “‘Waiting for the Barbarians’: Identity and Polemicism in the Neo-
Patristic Synthesis of Georges Florovsky”, Modern Theology 27:4 (2011) 659-691.
83 This was vividly laid out by John Behr (vide: op. cit) who criticises the neo-patristic
project in the said sense. To this he adds a critique of neo-patristics as a project ‘unaware’
its massive reliance on the Greek fathers at expense of other Orthodox

thought traditions. The neo-patristic synthesis is thus suspected of what
we might call a Hellenic monism84 (let alone the fact that Christian Hel-
lenic thought is astoundingly complex and pluralized).85 Although of a
different level, another objection tied to the previous one analogically is
that the ‘many’ on the other side of the ‘one’ are reduced (‘subsumed in
advance’) by presupposing what any particular agency of the many real-
ly and truly is, should or might become. Hence the personal relations of
one and many, despite the sensitivity to otherness, are suspected of be-
ing reduced by an imported dialectic of ‘one and many’ in terms of a
binary logic conducive to ‘re-logocentrization’ where otherness is sub-
sumed under the ‘same’, idiosyncratic multitudes of others under the ‘one’
etc (which implies a lack in deconstructive hermeneutical self-awareness
and according sensitivity). This is closely connected to reserves voiced
of (or not doing enough against) the current fragmentation of theology into compartmen-
talised academic disciplines. A brisk answer to this came from Matthew Baker. Counter-
criticizing Behr whilst defending the main tenets of the neo-patristic Florovskian proj-
ect, Bakers states that John Behr’s June 2010 Volos Conference paper “… appears to want
to pass beyond what it has not first stopped at length yet to consider. Curiously, the paper
criticizes ‘synthetic’ readings of the tradition while also connecting the neo-patristic syn-
thesis with the fragmentation of disciplines in contemporary academic theology. Fr. Behr’s
criticisms may accurately describe the reception and development of the neo-patristic idea
since* Florovsky; yet it is difficult to see how the synthetic method can be anything but at
odds with fragmentation, or how such a synthetic method could be avoided if one is to
uphold the unity and continuity of tradition. Like Behr, Florovsky himself criticized the
separation between patristic and biblical studies, countering this by emphasizing the in-
terpretive and theological nature of all divisions in a historical epoch or field […]. Yet far
from passing beyond, Fr. Behr’s own emphases upon the centrality of Christ and his Cross,
the Christological – economic basis of Trinitarian doctrine and the exegetical and martyr-
ic character of theology, as well as his concern not to ‘algebraize’ or eclipse the Scriptural
narrative in all its specificity, in fact agree in large part with the core design of Florovsky’s
hermeneutic […]”. Vide: Matthew Baker, “‘Theology Reasons’ — in History: Neo-Patris-
tic Synthesis and the Renewal of Theological Rationality”, Theologia 4 (2010) 114-115 n. 145.
84 This seems to surface as a tendency in one of the neo-patristic fore-fathers of the
movement. Namely, in Florovsky’s statement which claims “In the Church Hellenism
has been eternalized* (Russ. vyekovyechen): introduced into the very texture of churc-
hood (Russ. cerkovnost), as an eternal category of Christian existence”; vide: George
Florovsky, Ways of Russian Theology (in Russian), YMCA-Press, Paris (¹1937) ²1983, 509.
85 This is a tentative suggestion. Still, it is potentially fruitful to critically distinguish be-
tween monistically ‘Hellenizing’ theology, on one hand, and the colossal importance of our
Greek fathers, on the other hand. In fact, what is ‘monistic’ falls into both (a) monopolizing
the Greek fathers at expense of (all) others and (b) viewing their own immanent diversity of
thought and practice as more uniform than it actually is in historical practice, text and context.
in regard to personhood (viz. the concrete person) being conceptualized

primarily as ‘being-for-the-other’ and represented ‘in advance’ by the
‘community’. For, this may subdue (reglement) the unfathomable depths
and irreducible worth of one’s own personal subjectivity and one’s own
dynamics of freedom, choice, living — where the community (a diverse
reality) is subsumed by one speaking ‘in the name of it’, and, conversely,
where one particular person is seen in the mirror of a presupposed com-
munity conceived collectivistically (‘catholically’ i.e. ‘sabornistically’), etc.
2.2. Who is to philosophize and how? A second point of entry for
criticism is voiced by asking to what extent contemporary philosophical
thought patterns are, in fact, retroactively ‘in-read’ into patristic and bib-
lical textual sources. These are very complex issues of a hermeneutical or-
der. It is one thing to display the philosophical potential of neo-patristic
thought, in the act of re-interpreting the Church fathers — showing, in
particular instances, even the relative supremacy of actualized patrologi-
cal philosophical capacity. However, it is an entirely other thing to ‘force’
them to speak in the manner of Heidegger and Levinas, or others more.
The concern is that the latter might be an effect of undiscerning optimism
of an overly inclusive hermeneutic: a seduction by secular thought forms
and idioms of the secular vernacular currently in vogue. The hermeneu-
tical ‘circulus’ in this context of concerns might be formulated as follows:
Are the Church fathers truly consulted as the criterion for understanding
the ‘text’ of existence (i.e. the symbolic order of our philosophical, cultur-
al and historical life world) or is it, in fact, the other way around.
2.3. Shadows of inconsistency? A third point of entry is articulat-
ed by seeking and finding what we may call mistakes of auto-referential
inconsistency. One objection voiced by Papanikolaou, for example, is that
theologizing on the ways the Trinity ‘is’ (in Lossky and more so in Yan-
naras) collides with the strict postulate of apophatic ‘unknowing’86 (mark-
edly, Zizioulas departs from the two on that point of concern). Another
from a host of objections seems to address what we might call ‘performa-
tive’ paradoxes. Theologians of personhood state that their conceptions
serve to actualize the reality of the person. But what they do is to (theo-
retically) deactualize it: paradoxically, precisely by overemphasizing the
86 Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism, and Divine-Human
Communion, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 2006, 106 et passim. We
found this study very helpful in our effort to overview recent prospects of personalist
Orthodox theologizing.
‘person’ over and against ‘nature’. For instance, the distinction of person
(prosopon, hypostasis) and nature (physis) tends to be overly ‘sharp’ and
too ‘vertical’ at the expense of what is human nature, ‘opened-up’, as the
case happens to be, in intricate incarnate historical experiences and net-
works of contexts. In fact, this rather rough distinction is possible only on
the level of ‘ordo cognoscendi’, but not as an expression of ‘ordo essendi’.
That is, it may be posited on the level of intellectual analysis and distinc-
tion-making, but not substantially. The concept of personhood, it is sus-
pected, thus draws uncomfortably near to a mysticistic remnant of an il-
licit neo-platonism, where the hypostasis ‘ecstasizes’ – escapes – from the
bonds of a negatively conceived nature. In his poignant arguments against
Yannaras, Nikolaos Loudovikos makes a series of such remarks.87 More re-
cently, he states that “…nature was created to be deiform and not at all in-
exorable and monstrously inimical to the person, who is supposedly free
by definition (and the fall happened not because of the existence of nature,
but precisely on account of Man’s self-serving personal choices – it is tell-
ing that because Yannaras identifies nature and the fall, he rejects the lat-
ter as an ontological event). Our personal-gnomic ek-stasis should aim
87 Cf. Nikolaos Loudovikos, The Apophatic Ecclesiology of Consubstabntiality. Limits of
Eucharistic Ecclesiology (in Greek), Armos, Athens 2002, 22, 50, 150. As of recently he ques-
tions Zizioulas, too, on similar charges. To our mind he is successful in virtue of the fact
that this, in itself, invites more theological reflection and critical discursive articulation. As
minimum, his criticisms are indicative of the fact that both Yannaras and Zizioulas need
to readdress their notion of created nature (viz. the person/nature distinction): for, even if
it proves to be non-problematic, it does seem to provoke misunderstanding or theoretical
reserve. However, we are not entirely convinced that what he considers as errings of Yan-
naras and Zizioulas (particularly à propos the person/nature distinction) correspond to
what is actually intended by the two. On the other hand, Loudovikos is more convincing
when criticizing, say, Zizioulas’s understanding of Lacanian desire, or when he deconstructs
possible idealistic sedimentations in the Metropolitan’s conception of ‘nature’ (cf. Nikolaos
Loudovikos, “Person Instead of Grace and Dictated Otherness: John Zizioulas’s Final Theo-
logical Position”, Heythrop Journal 48 [2009] 1-16). Be that as it may, they are thus instigated
to make the necessary clarifications of their positions respectively. It is gladdening to find
that Zizioulas responded rather swiftly. At the conference on Maximus the Confessor, held
in Serbia, he made his statement through the paper titled: “Person and Nature in the The-
ology of Saint Maximus the Confessor”, tr. B. Lubardić, in Maxim Vasiljević (ed.), Knowing
the Purpose of Creation Through the Resurrection, Proceedings of the Symposium on St Maxi-
mus the Confessor, Belgrade October 18-21, 2012, Sebastian Press  The Faculty of Orthodox
Theology – University of Belgrade 2013. In the said paper Zizioulas states clearly that his
study essay, in part, may be regarded as offering necessary “clarifications” (sic). He is con-
cerned by the criticism he received from several authors, but he dedicates his answer most-
ly to J.-C. Larchet (one can discern that he is indirectly speaking to N. Loudovikos as well).
at the restoration of nature and at its divinization, and not, according to

Maximus, at its ek-static ‘truncation’ through the renunciation (as suppos-
edly non-personal – i.e. nonsubsistent?) of either the instincts, or the un-
conscious, or the body, for the sake of a pseudo-ascetical ek-static ‘apos-
tasis’, or ‘separation of oneself ’ from it, a truncation that is regarded by
Maximus unhesitatingly as ‘Manichaean’88. Despite the fall, then, nature
remains as a gift of God, naturally, without the ‘censurable’ sinful fall of
the free will, which, according to Maximus, also provoked the ‘non-cen-
surable’ fall of nature — it is the person, as I have said, that rendered na-
ture the way Yannaras regards it, not the other way round.89 He proceeds
to add another significant point: “There is no existential ‘apo-stasis’ or ‘ek-
stasis’ or ‘freedom’ from nature, but its affirmation and its opening up to
a mode that is beyond nature, not simply the mode the ‘person’, but the
mode of uncreated enhypostatic nature”.90 As this train of criticism strives
to display, the notion of nature is thereby problematically viewed as a dark
other or terra obscura — ‘lagging’ behind and ‘bellow’ our personal hy-
postasis: analogous, say, to the concept of ‘slumbering’ nature in German
romantic idealism (where it is the dialectical self-reflection of the ‘spir-
it’ that brings [‘awakens’] nature to itself as the other-being of the spirit91),
and so on. What is more, in part as a reply to Yannaras’s counter-critique,92
Loudovikos contends that Yannaras conflates nature with the principle of
evil itself: “Having a different view,93 Yannaras in the end identifies nature
with evil, objectifying it in an evil being that is independent and reliant on
its own powers and that exercises its infernal authority on a good being,
88 Loudovikos refers to Maximus the Confessor, Ambigua, J. P. Migne, PG 1340BC.
89 Nikolaos Loudovikos, “Hell and Heaven, Nature and Person. Chr. Yannaras, D. Stăniloae
and Maximus the Confessor”, 22.

90 Nikolaos Loudovikos, op. cit., 23.
91 This is not to say that, for the German idealists (especially Schelling and Hegel), na-
ture and spirit are totally identical in the ontological sense — nor, for that matter, are they
totally different in the ontological sense. Rather, spirit is conceived as the non-natural
end of nature. It is out of nature, in and through the historical process (a process which
is dialectically shown to be ‘necessary’ and ‘rational’), that emerges spirit, or, the succes-
sively increasing self-awareness of freedom as the goal of spirit. Hence, freedom of spirit
is displayed as the ‘non-natural goal of nature’ (Benjamin Berger), etc.
92 Cf. Christos Yannaras, Six Philosophical Sketches (in Greek), Ikaros, Athens 2011, 126.
93 A view different from, to wit, what Loudovikos sees as the “anthropology of a psy-
chosomatic sanctification and participation in God”, which flows from the Christology
discussed in Loudovikos’s essay, and which was “a constant throughout Eastern theolo-
gy, from Macarius and Maximus through to Gregory Palamas”.
which is the person. Yannaras writes: ‘Man is created, and his given mode
of existence (his nature or essence) is by necessity that of individual ontic-
ity, of the instinctive urges of self-preservation, domination, perpetuation.
It is that of self-completeness at the opposite pole to the good; that is, it is
evil’, an evil ‘which destroys a personal human being with the same even-
handed indifference with which it destroys any animate existence’94”.95 All
of this is closely tied to a new awareness of, possibly, problematic relapses
into secular philosophical viewpoints at the expense of, as is argued, prop-
er patrological hermeneutics, notwithstanding the according theology. Of
course, it is an entirely different matter whether this is, or is not, doing full
and tactful justice to Yannaras and Zizioulas who are primarily targeted,
notably by Loudovikos96 and, as of lately, by Jean-Claude Larchet97 in his
intensely polemical approach to Zizioulas and Yannaras.
94 Loudovikos refers to: Christos Yannaras, The Enigma of Evil, Holy Cross Orthodox
Press, Brookline, MA 2012, 35, 37.

95 Nikolaos Loudovikos, “Hell and Heaven, Nature and Person. Chr. Yannaras, D. Stăniloae
and Maximus the Confessor”, 23.

96 Loudovikos asserts that Yannaras and Zizioulas, at a level, share “similar theologies”.
Both presuppose a “Christology of escape” (cf. idem, Terrors of the Person and the Ordeals
of Love, 58 [he makes the remark whilst discussing Zizioulas, but he repeats the same
and holds the same in regard to Yannaras as well]). Loudovikos rests his case upon his
claim that both theologians, in one way or another, derogate created nature in favour of
a natureless human being or ‘person’ — predestined to hypostatize the natural energies
of God, nothing else: “Nature has no future in eternity, remains soteriologically unaffect-
ed, simply checked and controlled, like an infection, and in the end is totally abrogated,
in an ecstatic delirium wherein without nature the created being hypostasizes the natu-
ral energies of God — the creature is flooded by the divinity”: cf. idem, “Hell and Heav-
en, Nature and Person. Chr. Yannaras, D. Stăniloae and Maximus the Confessor”, 24. Pa-
panikolaou’s assessment of the theology of personhood expounded by Zizioulas is more
positive and empathetic than that of Loudovikos. What is more, Papanikolaou comes to
Zizioulas’s defense in answering Turcescu’s criticism of Zizioulas. At least inasmuch as he
claims that Turcescu’s argumentation does not succeed in backing his (Turcescu’s) main
thesis or standpoint — which, Papanikolau seems ready to concede, might be correct af-
ter all: namely, a relational ontology of (trinitarian) personhood, as such, might not be
found in the referential Cappadocian fathers. Cf. Aristotle Papanikolaou, “Is John Zizio-
ulas an Existentialist in Disguise? Response to Lucian Turcescu”, Modern Theology 20:4
(2004) 601-607: 602 (viz. Lucian Turcescu, “‘Person’ versus ‘Individual’ and Other Mod-
ern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa”, Modern Theology 18:4 [2002] 527-539).
97 Cf. J.-C. Larchet, “Personne et nature. Une critique orthodoxe des théories person-
nalistes de Christos Yannaras et de Jean Zizioulas”, in idem, Personne et nature. La Trini-

té – Le Christ – L’homme. Contributions aux dialogues interorthodoxe et interchrétien con-
temporains, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 2011, 207-396; idem, La divinisation de l’homme
selon saint Maxime le Confesseur, Les Éditions du Cerf, Paris 1996.
2.4. ‘Personal–ism’ and-or theology of the human being in Christ.

It is beyond the scope of this work to explore and evaluate in detail all the
actors and according viewpoints in this current debate. Still, it is help-
ful to mention that the herewith explicated ideas and currents of think-
ing about the human being in Christ should be viewed as a reflection of a
wider (passionate and sustained) dialogue by those who bring into ques-
tion the newer Orthodox ‘personalism’ as such and those who affirm it. In
general, the first party claim that it is at odds with what the tradition of
Orthodox theology of the human being actually proffers (again, it is sus-
pected as an alien idealist and or existentialist import from the ‘West’).
The second party, in various ways and attempts, claim the opposite. As
regards the first group, next to the Loudovikos and Larchet, one should
mention Lucian Turcescu and Hierotheos Vlachos.98 As regards the sec-
ond group, next to Lossky, Yannaras, Zizioulas, Horuzhy and Papaniko-
laou, one should mention Kallistos Ware and Norman Russel.99 Turcescu
questions Zizioulas for “… using nineteenth- and twentieth-century in-
sights which he then foists on the Cappadocians”100 (notably, on Grego-
ry of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea). Vlachos is poised against the very idea
that the notion and term of ‘person’ can legitimately be used to describe
the human being. It should be reserved exclusively for descriptions of the
Trinity. Otherwise, he fears (a) human agency will be thought of in terms
and ways appropriate solely to the divine agency, viz. the Trinity and (b)
the ascetical-ethical side of becoming like God in Christ may be depreci-
ated (viz. likeness) in favour of an abstract image formally analogous to
the divine image: “In particular, it should be noted that the term ‘person’
is assigned by the Fathers to the Triune God, while for humans the bib-
lical term ‘human being’ (anthropos) is used, with the specification that
human beings are created in the image and likeness of God. The Apostle
98 Cf. Lucian Turcescu, op. cit., 527-539; Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St Vlassios Hi-
erotheos, “Texts of ‘The Holy and Great Council’ Distinguished by ‘Creative Ambigu-
ity’ and Other Flaws”, tr. A. Filippides, posted on Orthodox Ethos, 28 September 2016:
https://orthodoxethos.com (In this connection it is helpful to consult Paul Ladouceur,
“Human Beings or Human Persons?” posted on Public Orthodoxy, 6 June 2017: https://
publicorthodoxy.org).
99 Cf. Norman Russell, The Doctrine of Deification in the Greek Patristic Tradition, Ox-
ford University Press, Oxford 2006. Of course, alongside Russell, others could be named
as well: most probably Andrew Louth (this is inferable, say, from his review of Larchet’s
more recent works and, more generally, from his own writings).
100 Lucian Turcescu, op. cit., 536.
Paul writes: ‘We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our origi-
nal conviction [‘hypostasis’] firmly to the very end’ (Heb 3:14). In this pas-
sage it is clear that the hypostasis is regarded as being in the image and
likeness. This is the so-called ‘hypostatic principle’. But when the hypos-
tasis-person is interpreted only as being in the image without being the
likeness, then there is a problem. Modern Western philosophy used the
term ‘person’ for human beings too. But this is viewed according to the
principle of personalism (in the philosophical, psychological and existen-
tial sense) and humankind’s fall from the theological concept of being in
the image and likeness of God. Unfortunately this Western personalism
has been brought into Orthodox theology by some”.101 Earlier statements
by Kallistos Ware, and some recent ones as well, it could be argued, may
be taken to represent a meta-critique of such views proposed by Vlachos,
not least because the latter might be misrepresenting the case for Ortho-
dox personalism, or, better said, Orthodox theology of personhood (espe-
cially with regard to the dimension of likening to God in Christ, which is
therein considered as a crucial aspect of the human being as person, etc).
3. The nascent of the age of personhood
The potentials of such Orthodox triadological, Christological and an-
thropological description of personhood, its hermeneutical and socio-
cultural critical potential, but most of all the revelation of the event of
God and man in communion leading to spiritual deification, by virtue
of personhod ‘on both sides’, theoretically executed in the newer Ortho-
dox personalism — remain revolutionary and radical in their implica-
tions. The prima facie extravagance of it all (to an unprepared mind) is
due to the light of such insight being eschatological, not only theoretical
or historical. The tidings of the biblical kerygma are in analogical sta-
tus to the former. Metropolitan John (Zizioulas) points this out himself:
“History does not incarnate nor does it always confirm the Gospel, no
matter how revolutionary it is, and simply because we are dealing with
a truth which is eschatological in its nature […]. The same goes for the
notion of person, which is nothing else but a borrowing from the escha-
tological way of our existence”.102
101 Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and St Vlassios Hierotheos, op. cit. (a. ii. Person and
human being).
102 John Zizioulas, “The being of God and the being of Man” (in Greek 1991, re-edited
but shortened in English 2010). We quote according to the non-abridged Serbian edition
Regardless of this, or because of it, these referential theologians are

working in favour of a theoretical elucidation of what is a human be-
ing sub specie Christi et ecclesiam.103 Consequently we are learning not
only what we are going ‘to be’ but also what and who we already are
in this process of becoming human as persons communing in the love
of Christ by the Spirit. “God has become human not only that we may
share in divine life, but also that we may become fully human”.104
The stringency of the newer Orthodox theologians’ unwavering
commitment to the anthropological question, the passion with which
they connect all aspects of theology to the mystery of the human be-
ing as the image of God Himself, and the fertile contributions of theirs
– exceeded only in deeply suggestive insights touching the heart of the
meaning of being men and women before others and God – go far in
convincing us that we might be on the brink of a new spiritual and theo-
logical age in the Orthodox Church — the age of men and women reflect-
ed and rediscovered as persons in Christ the Godman. They have made
it possible for us to comprehend that, ceteris paribus, exploring our hu-
manity is the other side of the process of further understanding the di-
vinity of our Other. What is more, the four paradigmatic thinkers may
be seen as prompted by Orthodox anthropological leavenings prophet-
ically manifest at the very beginning of the 20th century. For instance,
in 1902–1903 the following dialogue105 took place between Bishop Ser-
gei Stragorodski (later to become locum tenens of the Russian Ortho-
dox Church) and member of the Russian religious-philosophical intelli-
gentsia Valentin A. Ternavtsev (1866–1940), who during 1906–1917 was
a high-ranking official in the Synod. Addressing Bishop Sergius, who
was presiding as chairman of the Religious-philosophical gatherings in
St Petersburg,106 Ternavtsev states his opinion:
of this study, where the here cited post scriptum appears = Mitropolit Pergamski Jovan
Ziziulas, “Bitije Boga i bitije čoveka”, Vidoslov (2003) 77.
103 Interestingly, and indicatively, this thematic (viz. personhood and Christian an-
thropology) has become the main area of interest for the ICAOTD. This is document-
ed In the Image and Likeness of God: A Hope-Filled Anthropology, The Buffalo Statement
Agreed by the International Commission for Anglican-Orthodox Theological Dialogue
(ICAOTD), Anglican Consultative Council, London 2015.
104 ICAOTD, In the Image and Likeness of God, 5.
105 Brought to our attention by Sergei Horuzhy.
106 Nicolas Zernov, The Russian Religious Renaissance of the Twentieth Century, Harp-
er & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston 1963, 90-93.

T.: “In the fact of salvation, apart from the two mysteries about God and
Christ another, third mystery is contained, the one on Man. This reli-
gious mystery has not been revealed through the work of the Ecumeni-
cal councils… Theology and Christology have been developed, but an-
thropology remains undeveloped, and that is the great task for the future*
[…]”. Bishop Sergius responded:
S.: “Are you saying that within Christianity there is no revelation as to
what Man is?” The religious philosopher replied:
T.: “Yes”.
In this sense, it is remarkable to find this anticipative if not pro-
phetic voice echoed not only in the mid 20th century, through Vladimir
Lossky, but in the 21st century as well, through Kallistos Ware (*1934).
Most likely taking his cue from Lossky (viz. “… until now I have not
found what one might call an elaborated doctrine of the human per-
son in patristic theology, alongside its very precise teaching on divine
persons or hypostases”107) the Metropolitan of Diokleia, Kallistos, states
bindingly: “The key question in Orthodoxy today is not only ‘What is
the Church?’, but also and more fundamentally ‘What is the human per-
son?’ What does it imply to be a person-in-relation according to the im-
age of God the Holy Trinity? What does it mean to attain ‘deification’
(theosis) through incorporation into Christ?”.108
Excursus
[Note on the patristic Christological roots of the term ‘enhypostatized’.
The term ‘enhypostatized’ (‘enhypostatization’ etc) is a technical deriva-
tion from the Chaledonian Byzantine theological tradition. Its origin is
usually ascribed to Leontius of Byzantium. The doctrine that it strives to
express, at least the general aspects of it, however, is found in others as
well, notably in Leontius of Jerusalem. I here leave aside the debate on
the identity of the two Leontii (one from Byzantium, and one from Jeru-
salem). As A. Grillmeier says (AG 1, 271, 271 n. 3 et passim), F. Loofs
considered that the two names refer in fact to the same person, arguing
107 Vladimir Lossky, “The Theological Notion of the Human Person”, 112.
108 Kallistos Ware, “Orthodox Theology Today: Trends and Tasks”, International Journal
for the Study of the Christian Church 12:2 (2012) 116. (Metropolitan Kallistos has made sim-
ilar statements on other occasions as well: notably, during the reception of his doctorate
honoris causa from the Faculty of Orthodox Theology at Belgrade University 10 May 2002).
that Contra monophysitas (CM: CPG 6917) and Contra Nestorianos (CN:
CPG 6918) were “adaptations of a lost original by Leontius of Byzan-
tium*” (AG 1, 271). This has now been convincingly disputed, in favour
of Leontius of Jerusalem’s* authorship of the aforecited tracts. Having
said that we can still consult Leontius of Byzantium’s treatise Contra
Nestorianos et Eutychianos (in MPG 86, 1267–1396) where the terminol-
ogy and conception of ‘enhypostaton’ and-or ‘enhypostasia’ are laid out
in a clear and classical, equally groundbreaking fashion. Therefore, in
terms of its terminological and conceptual roots the technical idiom ‘en-
hypostatized’ can be traced back to Leontius’s distinction between a ‘hy-
postasis’ and something being ‘enhypostasized’ (in-subsistent) in a hy-
postasis (cf. Ph. McCosker, op. cit., 76 viz. B. Gleede, op. cit., 185). The
two are thus not the same: as the Latin translation would have it, “non
est idem hypostasis et enhypostaton” (Leontius of Byzantium, Contra
Nestorianus et Eutychianos, in J. P. Migne, PG 86, 1278 D). It has been
shown (C. dell’ Osso; B. Gleede et alii) that the term ‘enhypostatos’ (in-
subsisting), including the ideas it entails, has passed through a wide
branching of theological development, connecting figures such as Ori-
genes, Leontius of Byzantium, Leontius of Jerusalem, Maximus the
Confessor and John Damascus, whence it passed on into later Christo-
logical thought: East and West (Bonaventure, Thomas Aquinas, Barth
and others). The basic idea underpinning the said distinction may be ar-
ticulated as follows: Humanity as a nature ‘in general’, i.e. humanity ‘as
such’, cannot have a ‘person’ (hypostasis) of its own in abstracto. Howev-
er, humanity is not because of this ‘anhypostatic’ (deprived of a hypos-
tasis: anhypostasia, impersonalitas), nor is it on account of that non-ex-
istent. For, (a) humanity finds its concrete instantiation (enhypostaton;
enhypostasia) in the hypostases of particular human beings — persons
(prosopa); or, (b) as in the special case of Jesus Christ’s human nature (a
theme of particular interest to Leontius of Byzantium, together with the
status of the hypostasis of the pre-eternal Logos), humanity finds its hy-
postasis ‘in’ the hypostasis of the incarnate Logos, Jesus Christ. In wider
doctrinal terms this would mean, in words of Ivor Davidson, “the con-
tention that the humanity of Jesus Christ has no independent subsis-
tence of its own but is hypostatic, or personally real, only as the human
nature of the Son of God” (idem, op. cit, 225 cit. acc. Ph. McCosker, op.
cit., 72). (Davidson goes on to articulate the doctrine laying behind the
enhypostasia–anhypostasia distinction [which, because of the presence
of Leontius of Jerusalem, in its more universal shape is not to be under-

stood, exclusively, as Leontius of Byzantium’s ‘invention’]). Coming
back to the hypostasis–enhypostaton distinction let it suffice to cite Le-
ontius of Byzantium’s own words: “For the hypostasis relates to some-
body ([a concrete existence] ton tina), whilst the enhypostaton relates to
essence (ten ousian). Hypostasis determines the prosopon [person]
through particular characteristics (idiomasi), whilst enhypostaton de-
termines that this is not accidental. That is, the enhypostasized* (to de
enhypostaton) means that it is not an accident (symbebekos), for, it [the
latter] has its being in another and is not perceived in itself ” (Cf. idem,
Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, I, PG 86, 1277 CD). Formally speak-
ing, in the aforecited locus Leontius, amongst other things, tries to ar-
gue that if a nature (physis, ousia) has its subsistence in another hypos-
tasis (e.g. Christ’s human nature in Christ’s pre-eternal hypostasis) it
need not thereby become an accident. Moreover, this allows him to
combat the Monophysite party’s relativization of the humanity of Jesus
Christ and it allows him to hold that by positing that the human nature
(of Christ) finds its hypostasis ‘in’ the hypostasis of the incarnate Logos
we needn’t necessarily accept the postulation of either a separate human
hypostasis or admit that Christ’s human nature is a vacuous phantasm
(viz. aphthartodocetist depreciation of the reality of incarnation and of
the humanness of Christ). In other words, this allows Leontius of Byz-
antium to steer “between the Dyophysite party and the party of Cyril-
lian miaphysites” (Th. Cattoi, op. cit., 136, 143 cit. acc. O. Kashchuk, op.
cit., 216 n. 184). In general terms, this line of thinking is accordant in
aim and spirit with what we find in Leontius of Jerusalem’s treatise (viz.
CN): for, he expounds that “The Logos has in the last ages clothed his
eternal hypostasis, which existed before the human nature, and the
fleshless nature, which existed before the ages, with flesh, and hypostat-
ically inserted the human nature into his own hypostasis (sarka peribal-
lon aute te idia hypostasei), and not into that of a simple human being
(ouk [anthropou philou] ten anthropeian physin enhypestesin)” (Cf.
idem, Adversus Nestorianos, V, PG 86, 1748 D; also cf. tr. in A. Grillmei-
er [AG 1], op. cit., 282, 282 n. 44). As in other Christian theological tra-
ditions, in newer Orthodox theologizing as well, the doctrine of ‘enhy-
postasia’ as a theologoumenon (including the utilization of variations of
the according terminology) seems to be reaching a wider range of not
strictly traditional dogmatic Christological applications (e.g. in anthro-
pology, epistemology, linguistic theory). The literature regarding this

doctrine and its according terminology (tying up the standard referen-
tial scholars, from F. Loofs and A. Harnack via K. Barth to F. LeRon
Shults, B. Daley and A. Grillmeier, and J. Meyendorff etc) is a legion.
Therefore I mention only a very few relevant presentations of this com-
plex, labyrinthine and still debated thematic: Oleksandr Kashchuk, “Lo-
gos-Sarx Christology and Sixth Century Miaenergism”, Vox Patrum 37
(2017) 198-223; Philip McCoscer, “Enhypostasia Mystica. Contributions
from Mystical Christology for a Tired Debate in Historical and System-
atic Theology”, in: L. Nelstrop, S. D. Podmore (eds.), Christian Mysticism
and Incarnational Theology: Between Transcendence and Immanence,
Routledge, London – New York, 2016, 69-92; B. Gleede, The Develop-
ment of the Term ἐνυπόστατος from Origen to John of Damascus, Series:
Vigiliae Christianae, vol. 113, Brill, Leiden 2012; Thomas Cattoi, “An
Evagrian ὑπόστασις? Leontios of Byzantium and the ‘Composite Sub-
jectivity’ of the person of Christ”, Studia Patristica 68 (2013) 133-148; I.
Davidson, “Reappropriating Patristic Christology: One Doctrine, Two
Styles”, Irish Theological Quarterly 67 (2002) 225-239; R. Cross, “Individ-
ual Natures in the Christology of Leontius of Byzantium”, The Journal of
Early Christian Studies 10:2 (2002) 245-265; Matthias Gockel, “A Dubi-
ous Christological Formula? Leontius of Byzantium and the Anhyposta-
sis–Enhypostasis Theory”, The Journal of Theological Studies 51:2 (2000)
515-532; Carlo dell’ Osso, “Still on the concept of enhypostaton”, Augus-
tinianum 43 (2003) 63-80; Uwe M. Lang, “Anhypostatos–Enhypostatos:
Church Fathers, Protestant Orthodoxy and Karl Barth”, Journal of Theo-
logical Studies 49:2 (1998) 630-657; Dennis M. Ferrara, “‘Hypostatized in
the Logos’ Leontius of Byzantium, Leontius of Jerusalem and the Unfin-
ished Business of the Council of Chalcedon”, Louvain Studies 22:4 (1997)
312-327; F. LeRon Shults, “A Dubious Christological Formula: From Le-
ontius of Byzantium to Karl Barth”, Theological Studies 57 (1996) 431-
446; Brian E. Daley, S.J., “A Richer Union: Leontius of Byzantium and
the Relationship of the Human and Divine in Christ”, Studia Patristica
24 (1993) 239-265; Aloys Grillmeier, S.J. (= AG1), “Leontius of Jerusalem
and his picture of Christ”, in idem, Christ in Christian Tradition (vol. 2:
From the Council of Chalcedon [451] to Gregory the Great [590–604],
Part Two: The Church of Constantinople in the Sixth Century), in col-
laboration with Theresia Hainthaler, tr. by J. Cawte and P. Allen, Mow-
bray, London – Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY 1995, 271-

312; Aloys Grillmeier, S.J. (= AG2), “Die anthropologische-christologische
Sprache des Leontius von Byzanz und ihre Beziehung zu den Symmikta
Zetemata des Neuplatonikers Porphyrius”, in H. Eisenberger (ed.), Her-
meneumata = EPMHNEYMATA: Festschrift für Hadwig Hörner zum 60.
Geburtstag, Heidelberg 1990, 61-72; For a helpful review of meanings of
the term in patristic and byzantine Christian thought vide: Methody
Zinkovsky, Kirill Zinkovsky, “The Term ἐνυπόστατον and its Theologi-
cal Meaning“, Studia Patristica 68 (2013) 313-325; lastly, also cf. the short
yet elegant lexicographical entry in: F. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone
(eds.), “Enhypostasia”, The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church,
Oxford University Press, ³2005 (revised edition).]

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Ad Orientem

Essays from Serbian Theology Today

Belgrade • Los Angeles

A number of teachers from the Faculties of Orthodox Theology in

Belgrade, 14 January 2019 B. Š.

List of first publishing � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � � 363

Orthodox Theology of Personhood

hood in particular is shown to be re-received and specifically reworked

Press, Crestwood – New York 1974, 136.

rensky, Bulgakov that first made the respective points mentioned. In a

age and Likeness, 120.

and intellectual abstracta is rejected. This is done because, in such a case,

II. Theory of personhood:

of sophiology in an attempt to thus purify Orthodox theology in terms of authenticity.

swer this question it is best to introduce two additional sets of premises.

plary fashion in idem, “Ecumenical Dimensions of Orthodox Theological Education”, in:

Crestwood – New York 1983, 168-169.

tos Janaras, Hajdeger i Dionisije Areopagit, 79).

perience. Hence the mysteries of the Church (including the sacraments)

personhood attuned triadologically. Cf. John D. Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being”, in

tos Janaras, Hajdeger i Dionisije Areopagit, 113).

potential for transformation through the deifying grace of the incarnate

“To be and to be in relation become identical*”.21 Here we may observe

tutive instance of (a) being.

tina i jedinstvo Crkve, 44, 53-55).

of being, and (2) to be a unique particularity in and by relating. Further-

ern Church, SVS Press, Crestwood – New York 1976, 127.

towards existential autonomous individuality as after the fall*, […] con-

tos Janaras, Hajdeger i Dionisije Areopagit, 115).

realizable through ascetical liturgical and social ethical practice, by grace.

rificial love. What is more, according to the radical words of Yannaras,

Istina i jedinstvo Crkve, 21).

an ‘image and likeness’ of personal being – some uncompleted invest-

3. Transmission and development

ristic identity of personhood and conversely (in relation to both Lossky

‘theo-prosopology’ is a powerful tool for overcoming problematic aspects of Heidegger-

ikolaou (*1976)52, alongside distinguished others, should be noted as

III. Critical assessment

tos Janaras, Hajdeger i Dionisije Areopagit, 11).

sonal and communional: if an uncreated agency is involved ‘in person’,

ogy) and-or boundless ‘self-inflation’ of the subject (viz. speculative theology).

and absolute worth, through unique acts of experiential instancing of di-

discourse, the universal and self-critical dimensions of philosophy (phi-

Zizioulas,74 that the human being is that which it is yet to become in

74 John D. Zizioulas, Remembering the Future: An Eschatological Ontology, T & T Clark

Istina i jedinstvo Crkve, 22).

2. Problems and issues

79 Interestingly, this is precisely Yannaras’s criterion for distinguishing authentic eccle-

and consider other authors immersed in this movement of theological

yond the Neo-Patristic Synthesis” = “Nadilaženje neopatrističke sinteze”, tr. Z. Jovanović,

its massive reliance on the Greek fathers at expense of other Orthodox

in regard to personhood (viz. the concrete person) being conceptualized

at the restoration of nature and at its divinization, and not, according to

and Maximus the Confessor”, 22.

Press, Brookline, MA 2012, 35, 37.

and Maximus the Confessor”, 23.

nalistes de Christos Yannaras et de Jean Zizioulas”, in idem, Personne et nature. La Trini-

2.4. ‘Personal–ism’ and-or theology of the human being in Christ.

Regardless of this, or because of it, these referential theologians are

er & Row Publishers, New York and Evanston 1963, 90-93.

of Leontius of Jerusalem, in its more universal shape is not to be under-

pology, epistemology, linguistic theory). The literature regarding this

bray, London – Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, KY 1995, 271-

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