The Father’s Eternal Freedom

The Father’s Eternal

Freedom
The Personalist Trinitarian Ontology
of John Zizioulas

Dario Chiapetti

James Clarke & Co.

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The Father’s Eternal Freedom
The Personalist Trinitarian Ontology
of John Zizioulas

Dario Chiapetti

Edited with a Foreword by Norman Russell

James Clarke & Co.

 James Clarke & Co.
P.O. Box 60
Cambridge
CB1 2NT
United Kingdom
www.jamesclarke.co
[email protected]

Hardback ISBN: 978 0 227 17773 0

Paperback ISBN: 978 0 227 17774 7
PDF ISBN: 978 0 227 17776 1
ePUB ISBN: 978 0 227 17775 4

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A record is available from the British Library

First published as «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre»

by Edizioni Biblioteca Francescana, 2021
English translation first published by James Clarke and Co., 2022

Copyright © Dario Chiapetti, 2021

English Translation, 2022

All rights reserved. No part of this edition may be reproduced,

stored electronically or in any retrieval system, or transmitted
in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without
prior written permission from the Publisher
([email protected]).
Pro unitate Christianorum - Γιὰ τὴν ἑνότητα τῶν Χριστιανῶν
 Tu es sanctus Dominus Deus solus, qui facis mirabilia.
Tu es fortis, Tu es magnus, Tu es altissimus,
Tu es rex omnipotens, Tu Pater sancte, rex caeli et terrae.
Tu es trinus et unus Dominus Deus deorum,
Tu es bonum, omne bonum, summum bonum,
Dominus Deus vivus et verus.

Francis of Assisi, Laudes Dei altissimi,

La Verna, 1224
 Contents

Foreword ix
Preface xiii
Note on Citations xvii
Abbreviations xix

Introduction: General Aspects of the Figure and

Thought of Zizioulas 1

Part 1 Zizioulas’ Reading of the Fathers: The Notion

of Person and the Doctrine of the Monarchy of the Father 9
Chapter 1 The Emergence of the Attribution of
Primary Ontological Content to the Notion of Person in
Trinitarian Reflection 11
Athanasius: From the Nicene Doctrine of Homoousion
to Reflection on the Relational Character of Ousia 12
The Cappadocians: The Ontological View of Hypostasis
as Tropos Hyparxeōs of Ousia 23
Maximus the Confessor: The Personalist Deepening of
the Notion of Hypostasis as an Ontological Principle of the
Freedom of Nature 84
Chapter 2 The Father, the Ontological Principle of the
Triune and One Being of God 102
Data Learned from Scripture: God is Father 102
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics:
God as the Aitia of the Trinitarian Being 104
viii The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Part 2 Zizioulas’ Theological Development: The Father,

Free Cause of Being as Personhood-Freedom 161
Chapter 3 The Father: ‘The Ultimate Reality of God’s
Personal Existence’ 163
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 163
The Father as Trinity, as Ontological Principle of God’s
Triune Being 191
The Father as the One, as the Ontological Principle
of the One Being of God 208
One Trinitarian Principle of the Triune and One
Being of God: The Father as Existence for the Other
for the Sake of Personal Reality 232
Chapter 4 The Freedom that ‘Springs from the Very Way
the Hypostases are Constituted’: From the Freedom of the
Father, the Freedom of God 235
Divine Personhood: Freedom as a Mode of Existence
Caused in the Timelessness of the Unity of Nature 236
A Single Qualitative Freedom 256
Concluding Remarks: Zizioulas’ Bold Exercise in
Theological Reflection 257

Bibliography 265
Index 275
 Foreword

John Zizioulas, metropolitan of Pergamon, is one of the most significant

theologians of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. He
is well known not only to Orthodox Christians but also more widely
through the publication of his books in several Western languages
and, more importantly, his engagement with fundamental theological
and philosophical themes that transcend confessional boundaries. He
is a thinker, however, who frames his thoughts in essays and articles
rather than in monographs. His most influential books, Being as
Communion (1985) and Communion and Otherness (2006) are indeed
collections of articles united by a common theme. This means that his
seminal ideas are not developed systematically, as one would expect
to find in a monograph. He returns to them frequently in different
articles, examining them from various angles in ways that are not easily
summarised. Herein lies the first important feature of Dario Chiapetti’s
book: its systematic exposition of Zizioulas’ personalist trinitarian
ontology gathered from a great many of the metropolitan’s occasional
writings. Such a systematic exposition, already initiated by Aristotle
Papanikolaou in his book Being with God (2006), has now been carried
forward in a significant way.
The second important feature of Chiapetti’s book is its thorough
examination of Zizioulas’ patristic sources and its demonstration that
he stands in continuity with the patristic age. This continuity has often
been controverted. Although hailed by some as ‘a modern Father of
the Church’, Zizioulas has been accused by others of mishandling his
patristic sources under the guise of expounding them, and of insidiously
introducing ideas deriving from modern personalism and existentialism.
His philosophical enterprise has been ably defended by a number of
scholars – to engage with contemporary personalism and existentialism
x The Father’s Eternal Freedom

does not make him an ‘existentialist’ any more than engaging with
the dominant philosophical tradition of their own time made the
Cappadocians ‘Neoplatonists’ – but the interpretation of the patristic
sources on which Zizioulas bases his arguments remains problematic.
Chiapetti carefully examines the key notions of ousia (being), hypostasis
(subsistent entity), tropos hyparxeōs (mode of existence), prosōpon (person
as a relational concept), and koinōnia (communion) in their patristic
setting and shows convincingly that Zizioulas’ reflection on these
notions, while treating them creatively, does not distort their meaning as
determined by patristic usage.
The third important feature of the book is its demonstration of the
internal coherence of Zizioulas’ thinking. The metropolitan’s theology
of communion has often been welcomed as a counterweight to Western
individualism. It is certainly true that he regards Western individualism
(which he traces to Augustine and Boethius) as deplorable because it
treats the ‘other’ as a threat rather than as a necessary constituent of
relation. Yet at the same time, he lays great emphasis on the particular,
on the hypostatic. This approach has yielded important results for how we
are to conceive of the Trinity. Traditionally, we have tended to think of
the one God as a unified essence differentiated as three hypostaseis or
persons. Logically, the unity comes first (reflecting, perhaps, the monistic
ontology of the ancient Greek philosophers), with the differentiation of the
persons following upon this. Zizioulas, basing himself on Athanasius
and the Cappadocians, has reversed the generally assumed logical order:
it is the three persons who constitute the oneness, not the oneness that
is differentiated as three persons. This is because the cause of the divine
being is the Father, who is a particular hypostasis, not an undifferentiated
essence. The Father has priority (in a causal, not a temporal, sense) and is
thus the cause of the being of the Son and of the Spirit. ‘Father’ is a relational
term. The persons of the Trinity are constituted by their relations. They
are not the relations themselves, but it is their relations that determine
their being. As St John Damascene says, ‘the Father never existed when
the Son did not exist, but at the same time there was a father and a son
begotten from him, for a father cannot be called such without a son’
(De fide orthodoxa, 8). The oneness of God rests not in the sameness
of essence but in the monarchy of the Father, who freely and eternally
begets the Son and pours forth the Spirit.
The taxis of the Trinity thus conceived, an ordering and a unity
inseparable from the mutual perichoresis of the persons, fully accords
with the economic Trinity as revealed in the Scriptures. The Son and
the Spirit are sent into the world by the Father, in economic but not
Foreword xi

ontological subordination to him, in order to make the Father known.

Such a patterning is also reflected in the communion of Church, where,
at least in principle, the faithful are united in the body of Christ under
the presidency of the bishop in order to be transformed eucharistically
and become in communion with each other what they were created to be.
In the twenty-fi rst century, students of patristic thought have been
much influenced by John Zizioulas. Some, however, such as Sarah
Coakely and Morwenna Ludlow, have attacked Zizioulas’ insistence
on the priority of persons over substance; in her volume, Gregory
of Nyssa, Ancient and (Post)modern (2007), Ludlow claims that this
priority ‘does not do full justice to the richness of the Cappadocian
understanding of divine being’. Others, such as Lucian Turcescu and
Alan Torrance, have objected strongly to what they see as Zizioulas’
illegitimate use of modern ‘personalist’ ontology. Dario Chiapetti in
this outstanding book faces these challenges squarely, vindicating
Zizioulas as an accurate patristic scholar an enabling us to appreciate
in considerable detail the brilliant structure and coherence of his
trinitarian thinking.
Norman Russell
February 2021
 Preface

This study is an examination of John Zizioulas’ personalist trinitarian

ontology. The expression ‘personalist trinitarian ontology’ refers to
Zizioulas’ reflection on being, founded on the notion of person, as en-
countered at the intra-trinitarian level (for it is within the Trinity that
Zizioulas sees the full realisation of personal reality), the understand-
ing of which is rooted epistemologically in the event of divine-
human communion, particularly in the Eucharistic synaxis. That
said, attention is focused on Zizioulas’ reflection on the person of the
Father as the primary ontological reality of trinitarian personal being.
His understanding of the Father as the principle of distinction and
foundation of the trinitarian personal union will therefore be studied
as the incausate ontological cause of being as personal being, trinitarian
being and ontological freedom. The study will conclude with an exami-
nation of the notion of ontological freedom in the case of the caused
person, with reference to the Son, the Holy Spirit and humanity.
The question of the ontological principle of the Trinity, on which
much of Zizioulas’ speculative activity has focused, concerns the heart
of the trinitarian mystery and therefore of the Christian faith. When this
question is examined in relation to the reality of the person – primarily
that of the Father – and of freedom, it reveals important implications
on the level of anthropology, ecclesiology and pastoral care, as well as
of Christian ecumenism and dialogue with the Abrahamic religions.
Zizioulas’ thought acquires even more relevance when one considers ‘how
little ontological investigation into the meaning of freedom is carried out
by modern theologians’, according to Tillich, ‘given the immense role
the problem of freedom has played in the history of theology’.1 It should

1.
As recalled by R. Knežević, ‘Homo Theurgos: Freedom According to John
Zizioulas and Nikolai Berdyaev’, p. 1, at: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:
xiv The Father’s Eternal Freedom

be added that the evaluation of Zizioulas’ proposal by scholars is still

debated and, although there are many publications on the subject, there
is still no specific doctoral study. In fact, many critics object to Zizioulas’
lack of adherence to the Fathers of the Church on whom he claims to
base his reflection, which reveals a subordinationist understanding of
the Trinity, they claim, due to modern philosophical projections. Other
scholars, while favouring his ontology of the person, seem to waver
when their examination reaches the theological vulnus represented by
the assumption that the Father constitutes the only ontological principle
of trinitarian being. On the other hand, it is worth noting that Zizioulas
has always endeavoured to show that the doctrine of the ontological
monarchy of the Father is the most appropriate one for accounting for
the data of Scripture, patristic texts, conciliar formulations and the
lex orandi, as well as the salvific content of trinitarian dogma, with its
existential value for humanity today.
There are a number of difficulties in approaching Zizioulas. The first
consists in the unsystematic nature of Zizioulas’ reflection, which requires
patient exegetical and hermeneutical work on his vast, fragmented
production, which in some cases is not easy to find. The second difficulty
lies in the very object of the reflection. The question of the cause of being,
in the horizon of trinitarian ontology, poses complex questions, which
are located ‘at the limits of ontology’2 and meet an obstacle in the human
mind itself, marked as it is by the ‘experience of fragmented time’.3
The third difficulty consists in the interpretation of the Fathers, and in
particular of their intra-trinitarian reflection. This is a very difficult task,
as will be seen with regard to the patristic studies that will be examined,
which from time to time present a multiplicity of interpretations that
are often not easy to harmonise.
At a general level, this study aims to present Zizioulas’ proposal in a
systematic way and to verify its conformity to dogma and its internal
coherence. Specifically, it intends to ascertain what role should be

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&safe_filenameHomo%2520Theurgos-3.pdf&type_of_workThesis
(accessed 29 April 2020). Knežević refers to P. Tillich, Systematic Theology
(Digswell Place: James Nisbet, 1968), p. 202.
2.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. by D.H. Knight (London and New
York: T. & T. Clark, 2008), p. 60.
3.
‘Trinitarian Freedom: Is God Free in Trinitarian Life?’, in G. Maspero and
R. Wozniak (eds), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions and
Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology (London: T. & T. Clark, 2012),
pp. 193–207, here at p. 202.
Preface xv

given to the patristic foundation of Zizioulas’ theological discourse, the

plausibility of his reading of the Fathers, his theological development
and the role played by his recourse to modern philosophy, especially
existentialist philosophy.
After analysing the sources and the hermeneutical and epistemological
questions, I shall examine Zizioulas’ patristic reading, proceeding in a
historical-comparative way and comparing it with the texts of the Fathers
themselves and patristic studies of them. On that basis I shall identify and
examine the theological development that Zizioulas brought to patristic
reflection. Accepting the hermeneutic principle that Zizioulas says he
kept in mind when approaching the Fathers, namely, that a systematic
theologian, unlike a historian, must ‘make explicit what is implicit’4 in
order to deepen our understanding of dogma, I shall try to make explicit
what seems to be implicit in Zizioulas himself.
The primary sources of my research are Zizioulas’ literary corpus,
which consists almost entirely of articles, mainly in Greek, English and
French. First, there are the trinitarian writings – including the more
Christological and pneumatological ones – and the anthropological
writings. In second place, there are the epistemological, sacramental and
ecclesiological writings. These sources are studied in chronological order,
in order to grasp the development of the author’s thought, using the
editions in the original language and comparing them with the official
translations, where present. Alongside Zizioulan sources are patristic,
magisterial and scriptural sources. Studies on the author, together with
patristic, philosophical, theological and historical studies of dogma, as
well as manuals, dictionaries, lexicons and encyclopaedias, complete the
bibliographical apparatus.
After a general introduction to the life and thought of John Zizioulas,
in which a first look is taken at Zizioulas’ notion of personhood and
his Eucharistic epistemology, the work is divided into two parts, each
consisting of two chapters. The first part is on Zizioulas’ reading of the
patristic texts that form the basis of his reflection. Such an analysis is
necessary, first, because of the authority Zizioulas acknowledges in the
Fathers, second, in order to assess the possible merits of criticisms that
have been made of aspects of his theology that he traces back to patristic
teaching and, third, in order to identify the theological developments in
his proposal in Part II.

4.
‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor’, in M.
Vasiljevic (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection
(Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2013), pp. 85–113, here at p. 108.
xvi The Father’s Eternal Freedom

The second part aims to identify and examine the elements that
constitute Zizioulas’ theological development with regard to patristic
thought. The first of its two chapters examines his personalist ontology,
specifically that which constitutes the fundamental reality of God’s
personal existence, namely the person of the Father. After clarifying
the fundamental meanings of the notion of freedom in reference to the
Father, in its meanings of freedom for and freedom from, I address two
fundamental questions: the role of the Father in the Trinity, as a principle
of distinction – ‘the Father is Trinity’ – and his role as the foundation of
henōsis – ‘the Father is the One’. I shall thus attempt to clarify in
what sense the Father is understood by Zizioulas to be the sole cause
of trinitarian being, and how his being is understood as an uncaused
cause, ontologically free and the cause of ontological freedom.
The second chapter of Part II addresses the question of the personal
being of the person caused and therefore tries, with reference to the Son
and the Holy Spirit, to verify whether there is a difference, qualitatively
speaking, between the ontological freedom of the person caused and
that of the person causing. I conclude with a comprehensive and critical
survey of the results of my research.
Patristic texts are cited in the standard form, with the titles in Latin.
With regard to Gregory of Nyssa’s Contra Eunomium, the following
should be noted. The work is cited by Zizioulas mainly from Migne,
sometimes from Jaeger, and sometimes in an unspecified manner. For
consistency the bibliographical references of this work are to Migne.
This book is the English language edition, abridged, adapted and with
some modifications, of the Italian original, La libertà di Dio è la libertà
del Padre. Uno studio sull’ontologia personalista trinitaria in Ioannis
Zizioulas, which was based, in turn, on my doctoral research, conducted
under the direction of Professors Basilio Petrà and Konstantinos Agoras,
and successfully defended in December 2020 at the Facoltà Teologica
dell’Italia Centrale, Florence. I thank Norman Russell for the valuable
work of editing the text. Special gratitude goes to my mother.
Dario Chiapetti
May 2021
 Note on Citations

Zizioulas’ texts are quoted without mentioning the author’s name. These
texts were mostly published initially as articles. Subsequently many
were translated and collected in book form. Bibliographical references
are generally to the first published edition. Where the text has been
republished without change in a more readily available publication,
however, I have generally referred to that publication.
 Abbreviations

CChr.SL Corpus Christianorum: Series Latina (Turnhout:

Brépols, 1954-).
DZ H. Denzinger, Enchiridion Symbolorum Definitionum
et Declarationum de Rebus Fidei et Morum, ed. by
P. Hünermann, Italian trans. by A. Lanzoni and
G.B. Zaccherini, Bologna, 5th edn, 2009 (original
version: Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1991).
GNO Gregorii Nysseni Opera, ed. by W. Jaeger et al. (Leiden:
Brill, 1921).
GNOD Gregorio di Nissa, Opere Dogmatiche [Dogmatic Works],
ed. by C. Moreschini (Milan: Bompiani, 2014).
PA St Gregory of Nazianzus, Poemata Arcana, ed. by
D.A. Sykes and C. Moreschini (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1997).
PG J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series
Graeca, 161 vols (Paris, Imprimerie Catholique, 1857–66).
PL J.P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae Cursus Completus: Series
Latina, 217 vols (Paris: Garnier, 1844–64).
SCh Sources Chrétiennes, 2nd edn (Paris: Cerf, 1955-).
 Introduction

General Aspects of the Figure and

Thought of Zizioulas

A Brief Sketch of the Main Biographical and

Bibliographical Details
The Metropolitan of Pergamon, John Zizioulas, probably the most
important Orthodox theologian of our time,1 was born in 1931 in
Macedonia, completed his studies at the Universities of Thessaloniki
and Athens, and continued his education at Harvard. The intellectuals
he met during his studies included Georges Florovsky (1893–1979),
John Meyendorff (1926–92) and Paul Tillich (1886–1965). He is deeply
committed to ecumenical activity, working with the Faith and Order
Commission of the Ecumenical Council of Churches and, more recently,
as co-president of the International Joint Commission for Theological
Dialogue between the Catholic Church and the Orthodox Churches.
He is also an active academic lecturer in Edinburgh, Glasgow, London,
Athens and Thessaloniki. In 1986, while still a layman, he was appointed
Metropolitan of Pergamon by the Patriarch of Constantinople and
received all the priestly grades up to episcopal ordination on 22 June of
that year.
Zizioulas’ theological literary output, which unfolds over a period
of about fift y years, begins with his doctoral thesis, written under the
guidance of Georges Florovsky, entitled: ‘The Unity of the Church in the

1.
Cf. W. Kasper’s Preface to Comunione e alterità, the Italian translation by M.
Campatelli and G. Cesareo (Rome: Lipa, 2016) of Communion and Otherness:
Further Studies in Personhood and the Church, ed. by P. McPartlan, with a
Foreword by R. Williams (London: T. & T. Clark, 2006).
2 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries’ (in Greek,
1965).2 His output continued with the publication of numerous essays,
articles for journals and papers given at conferences. In some cases, these
writings have been collected and published in order to provide a more
unified presentation of his thought. Among the most significant essays
may be mentioned: ‘From Mask to Person: The Contribution of Patristic
Theology to the Concept of the Person’ (in Greek, 1976);3 ‘Hellenism
and Christianity: The Meeting of Two Worlds’ (in Greek, 1976);4 and
the entry ‘Orthodoxy’, which he edited for the Encyclopaedia of the
Twentieth Century (1980). With regard to the present study, mention
may be made of ‘The Father as Cause: Person Generating Otherness’
(2006); ‘On Being Other: Towards an Ontology of Otherness’ (2006);
‘Trinitarian Freedom: Is God Free in Trinitarian Life?’ (2012); and
‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor’ (2013).
With regard to collections of articles or academic lectures, I would
mention: L’être ecclesial (1981), published with some modifications in
English as Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church
(1985); Creation as Eucharist: A Theological Approach to the Problem of
the Environment (in Greek, 1992);5 Communion and Otherness: Further
Studies in Personhood and the Church (2007); Lectures in Christian
Dogmatics (2009); The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the
Church, and the World Today (2010).

2.
Ἡ ἑνότης τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ἐν τῇ εὐχαριστίᾳ καί τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ κατὰ τοὺς τρεῖς
πρώτους αἰῶνας (Athens, 1965). English translation by E. Theokritoff as
Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist
and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross,
2001).
3.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον: Ἡ συμβολὴ τῆς πατερικῆς θεολογίας
εἰς τὴν ἐνοιαν τοῦ προσώπου». English translation by N. Russell under the
title ‘From Mask to Person: The Birth of an Ontology of Personhood’, Part
I of Chapter 1, ‘Personhood and Being’, in Being as Communion: Studies in
Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press,
1985), pp. 27–49.
4.
«Ἑλληνισμὸς καὶ Χριστιανισμός, ἡ συνάντηση τῶν δύο κόσμων», in
K. Paparrigopoulos, Ἱστορία τοῦ Ἑλληνικοῦ Ἔθνους, vol. 6 (Athens:
Eleft heroudakis, 1976, 2003).
5.
Ἡ Κτίση ὡς Εὐχαριστία: Θεολογικὴ προσέγγιση στὸ πρόβλημα τῆς οἰκολογίας
(Athens: 1992).
General Aspects of the Figure and Thought of Zizioulas 3

Zizioulas’ Theological and Philosophical References6

In framing the figure of Zizioulas, the first aspect to consider is his place
in the strand of theological tradition known as the neopatristic synthesis,
that is, the theological trend that saw in Florovsky its initiator, and that
proposes to reconsider the teaching of the Fathers, especially the Greek
Fathers, on the basis of the foundational role for doctrine that tradition
recognises in their teaching.7
Having said that, it should be acknowledged that Zizioulas’ theological
and philosophical sources are manifold. As far as the theological sources
are concerned, there is a strong link with modern Orthodox theology,
especially Russian, which came to him directly from Florovsky and
indirectly from Christos Yannaras.8 The influence of Fyodor Dostoevsky,

6.
For an in-depth exposition, see Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del
Padre», ch. 1.
7.
Florovsky presented his programmatic line in a paper delivered at the 1936
Athens Congress on Orthodox Theology, first published in H.S. Alivisatos
(ed.), Procès-verbaux de premier congrès de théologie orthodoxe à Athènes,
29 Novembre - 6 Décembre 1936 (Athens: Pyrsos, 1939), pp. 238–42, and
later as G. Florovskij, ‘Patristics and Modern Theology’, Diakonia 4
(1969), pp. 227–32. It is characterised first of all by what Florovsky calls
polemically the ‘Babylonian captivity’ into which Orthodox theology had
fallen after the patristic era, that is, the influence of a Western theology
of neo-scholastic stamp more attentive to the metaphysical foundation
of doctrine than to the contribution of the Fathers (cf. G. Florovsky,
Collected Works of Georges Florovsky: Volume 4: Aspects of Church History
[Vaduz: Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987], pp. 157–82; and Collected Works of
Georges Florovsky: Volume Six: Ways of Russian Theology Part Two [Vaduz:
Büchervertriebsanstalt, 1987], p. 301).
8.
In his writings Zizioulas refers several times to Yannaras (albeit also with
critical notes); Yannaras likewise shows a good knowledge of Zizioulas’
thought (cf. N. Russell and C. Yannaras, Metaphysics as a Personal
Adventure: Christos Yannaras in Conversation with Norman Russell
[Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2017]). Zizioulas is also
influenced by the modern Greek Orthodox theology of Nikos Nissiotis and
especially of Yannaras, a theology that can be called Greek personalism,
as distinct from French personalism, in that it affirms the ontological
primacy of the person. Cf. B. Petrà, ‘Personalist Thought in Greece in the
Twentieth Century: A First Tentative Synthesis’, Greek Orthodox Theological
4 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov and Vladimir Lossky is strongly

present, as can be seen in various ways in the dialectical relationship
between the person – identified with freedom – and nature – identified
with necessity – and in the attribution of ontological priority to the
former.9 On the other hand, Zizioulas rejects the formulation of the
person as an absolute ego (typical of idealism) or as an individual (typical
of existentialism).
In the philosophical sphere, Zizioulas sees Martin Buber as the modern
thinker who has focused most on a relational ontology of the person,10
free from the ontological primacy of nature or the intentionality of
consciousness, although the attribution of this primacy to the relation –
the between – is a point from which Zizioulas distances himself, proposing
instead – in line with his patristic reading – the person. With Michael
Theunissen, one can also see the difficulty in determining exactly what
meaning Buber gave to the between, making its ontology difficult to assess
and understand.11 Zizioulas, rather, sees in Emmanuel Lévinas the one
who – again among modern philosophers – has recognised most fully
the value of otherness, although not on an ontological level because of his
totalitarian vision of ontology, that is, his inability to combine otherness
with communion.12

Review 50, nos 1–4 (2005), pp. 1–48; N. Asproulis, ‘Nikos Nissiotis, the
“Theology of the ’60s”, and the Personhood: Continuity or Discontinuity?’,
in A. Torrance and S. Paschalidis (eds), Personhood in the Byzantine
Christian Tradition: Early, Medieval, and Modern Perspectives (Abingdon:
Routledge, 2018), pp. 161–73; «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.
Ἀπόπειρα θεολογικοῦ διαλόγου», Synaxē 37 (1991), pp. 11–36, at p. 16.
9.
In line with Papanikolaou (cf. A. Papanikolaou, ‘From Sophia to
Personhood: The Development of 20th Century Orthodox Trinitarian
Theology’, Phronēma 33, no. 2 (2018), pp. 1–20), I argue below that this is
attenuated in Zizioulas.
10.
Cf. ‘On Being Other: Towards an Ontology of Otherness’, in Communion
and Otherness, p. 47.
11.
He points out that, according to Buber, the ‘between’ resides neither in the
‘I’ nor in the ‘you’ nor in a third party extraneous to the ‘I’ and the ‘you’, nor
in a third party as a unity of the ‘I’ and the ‘you’ (cf. M. Theunissen, The
Other: Studies in the Social Ontology of Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre and Buber
[Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986], p. 277).
12.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 47–50.
General Aspects of the Figure and Thought of Zizioulas 5

Zizioulas’ Eucharistic Epistemology13

Zizioulas’ epistemology is characterised by a strong eucharistic sense.
This is because Zizioulas is convinced that trinitarian reflection in the
patristic tradition starts from the experience of ecclesial life that is
inaugurated by baptism and centred on the Eucharist.14 In line with the
eucharistic theology of the eastern Fathers, Zizioulas understands the
Eucharist as a synaxis and precisely as an eschatological manifestation of
the Kingdom of God.15 From this emerges a conception of knowledge that
presents the following connotations: it originates in the prolexis of the
ecclesiological-eschatological experience, and therefore is communal; it
is founded in the being of the Son, inasmuch as the Church, and with
it creation, are incorporated in him; it has as content the knowledge
proper to the Son that is knowledge of the Father,16 and therefore of the
person, as particularity – ontological reality – established in relation.17
If, for Zizioulas, the reality of divine-human communion makes it
possible to speak of ontology and person, it imposes at the same time
an apophatic attitude: the person, indicating a unique particularity and

13.
For an in-depth exposition, cf. Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà
del Padre», ch. 2; for a general overview by Zizioulas himself, cf. Lectures in
Christian Dogmatics, pp. 9–39.
14.
Cf. ‘Truth and Communion’, ch. 2 of Being as Communion, pp. 67–122;
originally published as ‘Vérité et communion dans la prospective de la
pensée patristique grecque’, Irénikon 50 (1977), pp. 451–510 (republished,
revised by the author, as ‘Vérité et communion: fondements patristiques et
implications existentielles de l’ecclésiologie eucharistique’, in L’être ecclésial
[Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981], pp. 57–110).
15.
Cf. ‘Ecclesiological Presuppositions of the Holy Eucharist’, in The One and
the Many, pp. 61–74, here at p. 62; originally published in Nicolaus 10 (1982),
pp. 333–49. His reflections reveal the influence of Alexander Schmemann;
cf. A. Schmemann, The Eucharist: Sacrament of the Kingdom (Crestwood,
NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1987).
16.
The Eucharist is understood as a movement of the return of creation in
the Son to the Father. Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 149; the text takes
up, with modifications, an unpublished paper presented at King’s College
London, under the title ‘The Father as Cause: A Response to Alan Torrance’,
London, 1998.
17.
Zizioulas notes how in the liturgy of both Basil and Chrysostom the Father
is understood as the only truly existing one (cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ
εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», pp. 18, 22).
6 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

pertaining to the uncreated sphere although it is also implemented in

creation, cannot be defined by means of a positive qualitative content.18
In relation to this, one can only identify the elements that describe it,
which are hypostaticity, ecstaticity, freedom, causation/causality and the
mode of hypostatisation of nature.
For Zizioulas, this knowledge must also constantly measure itself
against the antinomy of created reality and thought;19 finally, due to the
fact that it is rooted in the eucharistic synaxis, as mystical experience
of the Church par excellence, as manifestation of divine-human
communion, it is attested on an experiential-communal, mystical-
ecclesial level,20 which reveals the limits of the cognitive possibilities of
the logical rationality of the individual and opens up to that ‘visionary
language’21 proper to a true and proper ‘eucharistic mysticism’.22

An Outline of the Notion of Personhood: Philosophical

Considerations on Human Existence23
Zizioulas’ intra-trinitarian reflection on the Father is conducted at a
theological level and, in particular, focuses on the notion of person/
personhood,24 to which the notions of freedom, causality, communion

18.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood’, in Communion
and Otherness, pp. 99–112, here at p. 112 (first published in C. Schwöbel and
C.E. Gunton (eds), Persons, Divine and Human (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark,
1991), pp. 33–46).
19.
Personal reality is not understandable from our ‘experience of fragmented
time’. See ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, in Maspero and Wozniak (eds), Rethinking
Trinitarian Theology, p. 202). Cf. I. Hausherr, ‘Ignorance Infinite’, Orientalia
Christiana Periodica 2 (1936), pp. 351–62, here p. 357; C. Yannaras, On the
Absence and Unknowability of God: Heidegger and the Areopagite, ed. by
A. Louth, trans. by H. Ventis (London and New York: T. & T. Clark, 2005).
20.
Cf. ‘The Church as the “Mystical Body” of Christ’, in Communion and
Otherness, pp. 289–96.
21.
Ibid., p. 296.
22.
Ibid.
23.
For an in-depth exposition, cf. Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del
Padre», Introduction.
24.
The term ‘personhood’, or ‘personal being’, translates προσωπικότητα (cf.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον: Ἡ συμβολὴ τῆς πατερικῆς θεολογίας
εἰς τὴν ἐνοιαν τοῦ προσώπου», in L. Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου:
General Aspects of the Figure and Thought of Zizioulas 7

and nature are connected.25 However, Zizioulas, who in deference to

the Church Fathers to whom he refers – Ignatius of Antioch, Irenaeus
of Lyons, Athanasius, the Cappadocians and Maximus the Confessor –
attributes particular importance to the link between the trinitarian
mystery and man, shows (without being exhaustive) how even from the
philosophical point of view the existentialist matrix of these notions
may be enriched by what may be learnt from theological reflection.26
In relation to the problem of human existence, Zizioulas starts by
distinguishing two possible philosophical approaches. According to the
substantialist approach, man is an individual, i.e. a being considered as

Διεπιστημονική τοῦ προσώπου [Thessaloniki, 2002], pp. 73–123, here p. 73;

originally published in Χαριστήρια εἰς τιμὴν τοῦ Μητροπολίτου Χαλκιδόνος
Μελίτωνος [Thessaloniki, 1977], pp. 287–323). The English edition (trans.
by N. Russell) renders προσωπικότητα as ‘personhood’ (‘From Mask to
Person: The Birth of an Ontology of Personhood’, in Being as Communion,
pp. 27–65, here p. 27). The French edition (trans. by A. Tsatsis) uses the more
psychological term ‘personnalité’ (‘Du personage à la personne: La notion
de la personne et l’hypostase ecclésiale’, in L’être ecclésial, pp. 23–55, here
p. 23); the Italian edition (trans. by D. Varasi) renders προσωπικότητα by the
more general term ‘dimensione personale’ (‘Dalla maschera alla persona: la
nozione di “persona” e l’ipostasi ecclesiale’, in L’essere ecclesiale [Magnano,
Biella: Qiqajon, 2007], pp. 23–69, here p. 23.
25.
Cf. ‘Appendix: Person and Individual – a “Misreading” of the Cappadocians?’,
in Communion and Otherness, pp. 171–77.
26.
I think I have indicated sufficiently that in Zizioulas there is an
existentialist approach, which directs his theological reflection without,
however, leading it to clash with dogma (cf. Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio
è la libertà del Padre», ch. 1). In this sense, if we distance ourselves from
Lucian Turcescu (cf. L. Turcescu, ‘“Person” Versus “Individual”, and
Other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa’, Modern Theology 18,
no. 4 [2002], pp. 527–39), we mitigate Aristotle Papanikolaou’s judgement
(cf. A. Papanikolaou, ‘Is John Zizioulas an Existentialist in Disguise?
Response to Lucian Turcescu’, Modern Theology 20, no. 4 [2004], pp. 601–
7). I recognise, however, with Papanikolaou and Ilarion Alfeev, that in the
Fathers there is a certain ‘existentialist’, or rather ‘personalist’, dimension
(cf. Papanikolaou, ‘From Sophia to Personhood’, p. 19; I. Alfeev, ‘The
Patristic Heritage and Modernity’, paper delivered at the ninth International
Conference on Russian monasticism and spirituality, Bose Monastery, Italy,
20 September 2001, translated by H. Bos, at: http://orthodoxeurope.org/
page/11/1/2.aspx (accessed 12 March 2021).
8 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

a self-subsistent substance, endowed with a capacity to evaluate, control

and dominate reality. According to the personalist approach, man is a
person, i.e. a being constituted in relation to another, endowed with a
creative capacity, which consists in ontological freedom, i.e. the exercise
of the faculty to imprint on created reality a personal, and therefore
relational, mode of existence.27 In particular, man is a person in terms
of hypostaticity (unique particularity) and ecstaticity (movement of
communion towards the other).28 Ecstaticity is then to be understood
within a process of personal-causal derivation which ontologically
constitutes the person in relation both to the cause and to all other
beings possessing the same nature, so that we can speak of the person as
a presentation, a mode of being, of nature in its totality,29 and in this sense
a hypostatic fullness.30 The existence of the person – as an ontological
datum, and therefore not dependent on the type of approach – is
marked by the necessity of his nature, which is manifested eminently
in death, as the disappearance of his being and therefore of freedom
(or at least of his possibility of existence).31 Thus, in Zizioulas, we see
the affirmation of the dialectic between person and nature, relative – in
theological terms – to this state of creation, the resolution of which –
again in theological terms – is the very content of the salvific economy
and, even more profoundly, of trinitarian existence.32

27.
This is the case with art and history; cf. ‘Human Capacity and Human
Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of Personhood’, in Communion and
Otherness, pp. 206–49, here at pp. 215–22, originally published in Scottish
Journal of Theology 28, no. 5 (1975), pp. 401–48.
28.
Cf. ibid., p. 213.
29.
Cf. ibid.
30.
Cf. ibid., p. 112.
31.
Cf. ibid., p. 227.
32.
Cf. ibid., pp. 237–47.
 Part One

Zizioulas’ Reading of the Fathers:

The Notion of Person and
the Doctrine of the Monarchy
of the Father

Part One examines the patristic texts from which Zizioulas deduces
the foundations of his ontology of the person. This is a matter of
considerable importance for the understanding of his thought, for in
line with Orthodox tradition he grants great authority to the Church
Fathers. My examination will attempt to verify the plausibility of
Zizioulas’ patristic reading in order in Part Two to go on to identify
elements of development in his theological reflection.
Chapter One will focus on the terms: hypostasis, prosōpon, ousia,
homoousion, koinōnia kata physin, tropos hyparxeōs, logos physeōs and
ekstasis, with reference particularly to Athanasius, the Cappadocians
and Maximus the Confessor. We shall see how the thinking of the
Cappadocians pushed towards a marked distinction between hypostasis
(that which indicates the particular) and ousia (that which indicates the
general), and that Zizioulas’ thesis, namely, that the tendency to express
ousia in terms of koinōnia kata physin reveals a conception of ousia as
‘communion’, receives support from Colin Gunton, Andrea Milano
and Johannes Zachhuber. Moreover, the Cappadocians increasingly
focused on the concepts of hypostasis and tropos hyparxeōs, identifying
hypostasis with particularity, as the presentation of the one ousia, that
which, in Basil of Caesarea’s words, ‘distinguishes and defines what is
10 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

common and what is particular’. To this is added the highlighting of the

relational character of hypostasis, which is understood on the basis of
relations of origin, tropos hyparxeōs being understood as closely related
to hypostasis.
Chapter Two will show how the testimony of Scripture and the lex
orandi supports the thesis of a tendency to identify the Father with God –
with the One or the One God. Athanasius’ affirmation of the Father as
pēgē and archē of the Trinity as well as of the Son, who characterises the
substance of God, is also found in the Cappadocians – although with
them the focus seems more on the Father understood as the henōsis of
the Trinity whose being the pēgē or archē of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit is specified as the aitia of ‘those who come from the cause’.
The conclusion I draw is that it is unsatisfactory to see the Cappadocians
either as uniquely personalist in their understanding of the Trinity or
as uniquely essentialist. What appears more probable is that both a
personalist and an essentialist understanding may be discerned in the
Cappadocians. The terms hypostasis and ousia need to work in tandem
for a theology of the person to be formulated that can serve as a basis for
Christian personalism today.
 Chapter One

The Emergence of the Attribution of

Primary Ontological Content to the
Notion of Person in Trinitarian Reflection

For Zizioulas, the elaboration of patristic ontology began with

cosmological reflection. From the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo – to which
Athanasius linked the affirmation, aimed at assuring the divinity of the
Son, that creation comes from the will of God, unlike the Son who comes
from the substance of the Father1 – Zizioulas deduces that the being
of creation is true being, insofar as it originates from a non-necessary
action of God – and therefore from a freedom that is ‘personal’ – and
consists in being other, as full ontological otherness (and not degradation),
in communion. This makes it possible to speak of a personal-dialectical
ontology. It is far removed from ancient Greek monistic ontology, which
conceived of the One as prior to or alien to the Many, and precisely
substance, and not person/otherness, as an ontological category.2 It is also
distant from the ‘panoramic’ ontology – so called by Lévinas – of Martin
Heidegger, who endeavoured to direct ontology towards the category of
the Other, but made the latter necessarily learnable through the world,
as part of the ‘panoramic’ nature of existence, without thus holding any

1.
Cf. Athanasius, Oratio de Incarnatione Verbi, 4–5 (PG 25, 104–5); quoted
by Zizioulas, e.g. in ‘On Being Other’, p. 18.
2.
Cf. ibid., p. 15.
12 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

constitutive role in ontology.3 It is only in the trinitarian sphere, however,

in Zizioulas’ view, that a thorough ontology of the person is developed.
Here we shall study the Fathers’ reading of trinitarian dogma – focusing
on the first two Councils of the Church, the Council of Nicaea in 325
and the Council of Constantinople I in 381 – since it is from this reading
that Zizioulas claims to learn the ontological content of the notion of
person and its ontological primacy with respect to ousia and koinōnia.
To this end, I shall analyse the meaning he gives to the main terms
connected with the notion of ‘person’ – ousia, homoousion, hypostasis,
prosōpon, tropos hyparxeōs, logos physeōs – and the issues related to
them: the meaning of the distinction between hypostasis and ousia, of
the identification between hypostasis and prosōpon, between hypostasis
and tropos hyparxeōs, as well as the relationship between ousia and logos
physeōs and, above all, the ontological primacy of hypostasis over ousia.

Athanasius: From the Nicene Doctrine of Homoousion

to Reflection on the Relational Character of Ousia
As already mentioned, Zizioulas derives the ontological content of the
notion of ‘person’ from trinitarian dogma, with particular reference to
how this was understood by the Fathers, beginning with Athanasius.
Zizioulas reads the development of trinitarian dogma precisely as the
progressive delineation of the ontology of the ‘person’, pointing to the
Council of Nicea as the first significant stage.4
Zizioulas considers the main aspects of the historical context in which
this ecclesial event took place, including the struggle with Arianism
with its doctrine of the non-consubstantiality of the Son with the Father,
and immediately points out that the category on which the debate was
based was that of ousia.5 This was the fundamental ontological category

3.
Cf. ibid., p. 45; M. Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. by J. Macquarrie and
E. Robinson (New York: Harper, 1962), pp. 149f.; E. Lévinas, Totalité et
infini: essai sur l’extériorité (La Haye: Martinus Nijhoff, 1971), pp. 15f., 63,
270f.
4.
Obviously, there is first the scriptural material, which for Zizioulas already
represents the dogmatic development of the understanding of revelation.
It is true, however, that he pays more attention to patristic reflection and
conciliar formulations.
5.
Terminologically, in his writings Zizioulas uses the term ousia (in Latin,
essentia) as a synonym for substantia (substance) and physis (nature).
Athanasius 13

in classical Greek thought and was initially accepted as such by the

Fathers.6 As we know, the Council, for its part, affirmed the divinity
of the Son through the notion of consubstantiality of the Son with
the Father, according to the formulation: ‘begotten only of the Father,
that is, of the substance of the Father … begotten not made, of one
substance with the Father’.7 The Council thus defined that the Son is
from the substance of the Father and is consubstantial with the Father.
The divinity of the Son was thus affirmed in terms of consubstantiality
with the Father, and this was understood in its connection with the
generation of the Son by the Father.
Zizioulas first asks whether the term homoousion is intended to
express in a positive sense the being of God and specifically the divine
unity or in the negative sense that the Son is not a creature. He is strongly
inclined towards the latter hypothesis.8 For him, Nicene substantialist
language is linked to reflection on the created-uncreated dialectic and
not on a divine metaphysics. The proof of this is, according to Zizioulas,

Accordingly, here, too, as a rule, these terms will be used equivalently.

Zizioulas recalls how, on a general level, ousia indicates being as being and,
more precisely, as in Aristotle, that by which something is what it is. With
regard to substantia, he recognises the Platonic meaning of existence and the
Aristotelian meaning of individual substance (first substance) or of genus
and species (second substance), of material substratum (hypokeimenon)
and of essence (ti esti). With regard to the Latin concept of nature, he
points out how – also because of the use that Scholasticism made of it – it
has increasingly acquired the meaning of ‘objectified substance’, putting
the notion of physis in the background. In so doing, also on the basis of the
Aristotelian idea of entelecheia, the conception was established of hypostasis
as a substance in possession of certain qualities, which goes beyond itself by
virtue of the potentialities intrinsic to its nature. Cf. ‘Human Capacity and
Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 209. With regard to
physis, as Zizioulas explains, this term, while always indicating in classical
thought, as ousia, the fundamental reality, the principle of everything that is,
turns out to be more ‘plastic’ – in the sense of empirical – than philosophical,
which is why it is more easily used by them in reference to creation.
6.
Cf. L’être ecclésial, p. 77. Here Zizioulas refers to E.P. Meijering, Orthodoxy
and Platonism in Athanasius: Synthesis or Antithesis? (Leiden: Brill, 1968).
7.
γεννηθέντα ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς μονογενῆ, τουτέστιν ἐκ τῆς οὐσιας τοῦ
Πατρὸς … γεννηθέντα οὐ ποιηθέντα, ὁμοούσιον τῷ Πατρί (DZ, 125).
8.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person: A Commentary on the
Second Ecumenical Council’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 181–82.
14 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

is the simple fact that Nicaea found itself reflecting and pronouncing
in response to Arius’ challenge, which placed the Son on the level of
creation.9
Having clarified this, it is possible to ask more precisely what the
Council understood by the term homoousion.10 Zizioulas does not say
anything about this, nor does Nicaea go into explanations. Zizioulas
does not even address the question of the meaning of the term ousia,
which remains undetermined at Nicaea. It is certain that ousia took
on several meanings in classical thought: it could indicate, according
to Aristotelian distinctions, the first substance, i.e. referring to a single
concrete being, or the second substance, the essence common to all
beings of the same kind. One may suppose that Nicaea opted for a use
of ousia as second ousia,11 to signify what is common to the Father and
the Son, even if clarification in this matter was offered only by Basil, as
Zizioulas points out.
We consider now Zizioulas’ reading of Athanasius, who tried to clarify
the term homoousion in order to deal with the problem of positions in
more or less clear-cut opposition to Nicaea.12 Certainly Zizioulas notes in

9.
On this point many scholars agree with Zizioulas (cf. G.L. Prestige, God
in Patristic Thought (London: SPCK, 1952 [1936]), pp. 211–12). A. Milano
also talks about the negative, apophatic meaning given to homoousion, as
the most widespread and shared interpretation of this term (cf. A. Milano,
Persona in teologia: Alle origini del significato di persona nel cristianesimo
antico [Bologna: EDB, 1996], p. 107).
10.
Zizioulas does not overlook the fact that this term was used at Nicaea in a
mostly generic sense – as in the case of two objects having qualitatively the
same substance – and later, with Athanasius, in a more specific sense – as
in the case of two objects sharing the same substance. On this point see, for
example, Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 197–218.
11.
It will be seen how Zizioulas shows reservations towards those interpretations
which, in trinitarian theology, would like the attribution of ousia prōtē to
hypostasis and of ousia deutera to ousia. Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ
πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, pp. 73–123, here at
p. 86.
12.
There were those who rejected homoousion, insofar as it could suggest two
equal ousiai, that of the Father and that of the Son, and therefore two gods,
or a divine substance prior to the Father and the Son, guaranteeing divine
unity (the modalism-adoptionism of Paul of Samosata); then there were
those who attenuated homoousion into homoiousion, whereby the Son was
‘similar’ to the Father according to substance (the Homoiousians); and there
Athanasius 15

Athanasius the presence of substantialist language13 as ‘useful and even

necessary as it was to indicate that the Son was not a creature’,14 but adds
that such language involved ‘logical difficulties’. For Athanasius, as in one
of Nicaea’s anathemas, hypostasis and ousia were terms to be considered
equivalent in their meaning of ‘being’ or ‘existence’, indicating simply
‘what is’.15 In this regard Zizioulas cites the Synodal Letter of Alexandria
of 362, in which Athanasius relates that such an anathema had been
pronounced by Nicaea against those who professed that the Son is of
‘another hypostasis or ousia’ than the Father, conceding that they could
speak of three hypostaseis as long as this did not imply a separation
between them.16 On the basis of this identification it was even possible to
speak of three ousiai in God.17 This being so, it is clear that for Zizioulas
one cannot speak of terminological precision in Athanasius, and that
therefore a dogmatic deepening of the being of God awaited completion.
However, Zizioulas grasps a remarkable contribution made by
Athanasius to reflection on the ontology of God’s being. The bishop of
Alexandria not only took pains to show theologically the non-necessity
of God’s creative act18 but, under pressure from Arian objections,
also affirmed that the generation of the Son by the Father, while not

were those who understood the Three as a single ousia, in the sense of a
single hypostasis (the Sabellians). Also, there was the Origenian position of
the three ousiai not different from each other but distinct. Athanasius, on
the other hand, deduced from the homoousion the numerical unity of the
ousia.
13.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause: Person Generating Otherness’, in Communion
and Otherness, p. 120). Zizioulas speaks, with reference to Athanasius, of
a substantialist ‘language’, in contrast to classical Greek philosophy, with
reference to which Zizioulas talks about a substantialist ‘approach’ (cf.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 208).
14.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 121).
15.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, pp. 73–123, p. 84. Zizioulas cites Athanasius, Letter to the Bishops
of Africa, 4 (PG 26, 1036B).
16.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 185.
17.
Cf. ibid. Zizioulas cites Basil of Caesarea, Homily 23.4 (PG 31, 597C).
18.
In the clear distinction between created and uncreated, Zizioulas sees
evidence of Athanasius’ distance from the cosmological current of Justin
and Origen, as well as the adoption of the eucharistic perspective of Ignatius
and Irenaeus (cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 72).
16 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

attributable to the latter’s will, was not involuntary (ἀθελήτως).19

Zizioulas develops this point, recalling how for Athanasius, as his
Orationes contra Arianos attest, the Son’s being belongs to the substance
of God. Zizioulas indeed recalls how Athanasius rhetorically asked
himself, in reference to the Son, whether ‘God ever existed without
what belongs to him’,20 to conclude that ‘without the Son, the Father’s
substance is “depleted” ’.21 On this basis, Zizioulas observes that the
divine substance, on the one hand, is presented in a dynamic sense
as the source of life and as productive22 and, on the other hand, is
characterised hypostatically, in the sense that the Son belongs to the
divine substance.23
Zizioulas is inclined to believe that Athanasius introduced, perhaps
for the first time in history,24 the idea of relation into the very substance
of God: ‘Substance is a relational notion, according to St Athanasius

19.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 108. Zizioulas cites
Athanasius, Against the Arians, III.66 (PG 26, 461–64), and notes how the
Council of Nicaea followed him in affirming that the Son was begotten of
the substance of the Father.
20.
‘Dieu a-t-il jamais existé sans ce qui Lui appartient’, ‘Vérité et communion’,
in L’être ecclésial, p. 73 – πότε γοῦν τοῦ ἰδίου χωρὶς ἦν ὁ Θεός; Athanasius,
Against the Arians, I.20 (PG 26, 53A).
21.
‘Uniformity, Diversity, and the Unity of the Church’, in The One and the
Many, p. 337 (originally published in Internationale Kirchliche Zeitschrift
91, no. 1 [2001], pp. 44–59). Zizioulas cites Athanasius, Against the Arians,
I.20 (PG 26, 53B). In fact, the passage sounds like this: ‘how can the perfect
and complete character of the substance of the Father be eliminated …’ –
πῶς τὸ τέλειον καὶ τὸ πλῆρες τῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς οὐσίας ἀφαιρεῖται. What is
eliminated is not the substance but its perfect and complete character.
22.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 59–60. Athanasius describes the
divine nature as ‘fruitful’ (καρπογόνος) (cf. Athanasius, Against the
Arians, II.2 (PG 26, 149C). It will be a question of establishing whether it
is the principle of trinitarian being or not. Athanasius does not seem to
exclude it, even if he attributes the term archē to the Father (cf. chapter two
below, the section titled, ‘Athanasius: The Father as Pēgē and Archē of the
Trinity’).
23.
Here the term hypostatic is to be understood in the sense specified by the
Cappadocians, i.e. as a concrete being (cf. chapter one below, the section
titled ‘Hypostasis as a Particular Being’).
24.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 107.
Athanasius 17

and the entire Greek patristic thought’,25 therefore, ‘to say that the Son
belongs to the substance of God implies that substance possesses almost
by definition a relational character’.26
Zizioulas then goes on to explore the question of Athanasian
substantialism. He writes:

If by nature God’s being is relational and can be denoted

by the word ‘substance’, must one not then conclude almost
inevitably that because of the ultimate character of God’s
being for all ontology, substance, insofar as it denotes the
ultimate character of being, can now only be conceived of as
communion?27

He believes that Athanasius opened the way to understanding the

notions of substance (ousia) and communion (koinōnia) as coincident,
without communion losing its substantial character and substance its
relational character, making communion a notion pertaining to the plane
of substance. This statement raises questions. It is not clear where the
notion of communion comes from and why it is so necessary. Moreover,
it is noted that it is implicitly understood as relational communion, an
aspect that is far from clear, as we shall see later. Zizioulas himself seems
to be aware of this, as he points out that he does not want to deal with the
question of whether there is such a radical change or whether it is merely
a matter of perception.28 In any case, according to the statement that the
Son characterises the divine substance, this is also true of the Father.
Zizioulas observes that Athanasius presents the reality of homoousion
from the fact that the Son comes from the Father’s ousia and not that
both come from a previous essence. For Zizioulas, Athanasius

25.
‘Uniformity, Diversity, and the Unity of the Church’, in The One and the
Many, p. 337.
26.
‘Dire que le Fils appartient à la substance de Dieu implique que la substance
possède presque par définition un charactère relationnel’; ‘Vérité et
communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 73. The apophatic approach imposes
on Zizioulas the caution of introducing the term ‘almost’ when stating
anything about the definition of the divine nature.
27.
Ibid., p. 73.
28.
Cf. ibid., p. 74. Zizioulas cites the study of M. Mackinnon, ‘Aristotle’s
Conception of Substance’, in R. Bambrough (ed.), New Essays on Plato
and Aristotle (London and New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1965),
pp. 97–119.
18 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

rejects any concept of divine substance per se, i.e. without

its automatic qualification by the term Father, by qualifying
such a use of the term substance, deprived of the relational
dimension contained in the term Father, as ‘the way of
thinking of the Greeks’. … Since by definition the term Father
is a relational term (there is no Father without relation to the
Son), the use of the term substance (ousia) differs radically
from that of the ancient Greeks. It is clear that at this point a
new ontology is finally emerging.29

Thus, Athanasius, having introduced the relation (and communion)

at the level of substance, made sure that the attribution to the Fathers
of the Aristotelian distinction between first substance – the individual
substance, ousia prōtē – and second substance – the universal substance,
ousia deutera – to understand, respectively, hypostasis and ousia, besides
being, again according to Zizioulas, absent in the Fathers, is not even
correct and leads to error.30 This is an aspect that Zizioulas takes up
several times. Even if it cannot be verified in the course of the present
study, the reason seems evident: for the Fathers, such a distinction
applied to the Trinity makes it impossible for theology to escape from
a monistic conception of ontology, making it problematic to highlight
the patristic novelty in conceiving the relationality of substance (ousia),
the ontological nature of relation (schesis), communion (koinōnia)
and ‘personal otherness’ in substance.31 Ultimately, the Aristotelian
distinction between first and second ousia, used by some scholars in
interpreting the trinitarian thought of the Greek Fathers, prevents us
from grasping, according to Zizioulas, the new relational ontology that

29.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, pp. 73–74; with reference to
Athanasius, De Synodis, para. 51 (PG 26, 784–85).
30.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, pp. 86–87. Zizioulas cites, among those who interpreted the
trinitarian theology of the Fathers on the basis of the Aristotelian distinction,
Prestige, God in Patristic Thought and J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian
Creeds (London: Longman, 1972 [1950]) (cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être
ecclésial, p. 74). I shall return to this point in light of the Cappadocians’
clarifications of terminology.
31.
By communion, we mean an agapic relational reality, by otherness, a concrete
entity characterised by being distinct from another and ontologically related
to it.
Athanasius 19

he sees in the Cappadocians,32 characterised by the coincidence, in the

distinction, of hypostasis and ousia.33
In any case, while Athanasius grasped the relational character of
substance and opened the way to reflection on the ontological nature of
relation and communion – an aspect that would be deepened by Basil –
he did not clarify the role of otherness in the definition of substance34 and
how ‘communion within the same substance implies an otherness of an
ontological order’.35 In Zizioulas’ view, it was impossible for Athanasius
to answer such questions, since for him the terms ousia and hypostasis
were still understood as synonyms. Therefore, Nicene substantialist
language, useful and even necessary as it was to exclude Arius, did
not lead Athanasius – unlike the Cappadocians when responding
to Eunomius’ provocations – to deepen the aspect of the ontological,
‘substantial’ otherness of the Three.36
For Zizioulas there is clearly a need for further clarification of the notion
of ‘relational substance’, precisely what the Cappadocians provided. In
other words, it is necessary to understand how to speak of otherness in
an ontological sense, in its connection to the level of substance and not
of will. On the other hand, Zizioulas sees in Athanasius the appreciable
effort to understand the divine ontology, God’s being from the point of
view of his substance and freedom.37 According to Zizioulas, Athanasius
placed ‘the being of God above the level of the will’,38 introducing the idea
of a will and freedom understood in an ontological sense, concerning the

32.
Cf. ibid., p. 76.
33.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 107.
34.
See ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 75.
35.
Ibid.
36.
As Zizioulas evinces from the fact that, to express God’s being, the
Cappadocians resorted to the image of the three suns, Athanasius to that
of the one sun and its rays (cf. ‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today:
Suggestions for an Ecumenical Study’, in The One and the Many, pp. 3–16,
here at p. 6). (‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’, a paper presented to
the British Council of Churches, was first published in A.I.C. Heron (ed.),
The Forgotten Trinity: 3: A Selection of Papers Presented to the BCC Study
Commission on the Trinitarian Doctrine Today (London: Church House
Publishing, 1991), pp. 19–32.)
37.
An examination of the term ‘freedom’ in the intra-trinitarian reflection of
the Fathers will be conducted below. For now, I use this term, with Zizioulas,
in relation to the divine substance as a synonym for ‘will’.
38.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 109.
20 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

being of God, ‘above the limitations inherent in choice and givenness’39

that would limit this freedom and will, placing them under the sign of
necessity.40 In this way, Athanasius paved the way for thinking of God as
an ontologically ‘free’ being because, in negative terms, he generates not
by virtue of a choice – which would presuppose the Father’s affirmation
preceding the Son in time – and because, in positive terms, the Father
generates the Son and the Son belongs not to his will but to his substance
and characterises it.
In light of what has been said, it may be concluded that, for Zizioulas,
Athanasius was not the exponent of an anti-personalist substantialist
approach, later supplanted by the Cappadocian anti-essentialist personalist
approach, but the one who set the substantialist approach on a personalist
basis.41 This is confirmed by scholars such as J.N.D. Kelly and Andrea
Milano, who, although they do not speak of divine relational substance
in reference to Athanasius, allow us in explaining what Athanasius means
by homoousion and ousia to consider Zizioulas’ reading reliable. As for
Athanasius’ use of homoousion, Kelly points out that it indicates the fact
that the Father and the Son ‘share the same Godhead’,42 but in the sense
that ‘the Son is the same self-same Godhead as the Father’,43 since for
Athanasius ‘the fullness of the Father’s divinity is the being (τὸ εἶναι) of
the Son’.44 In the same line, Milano notes how homoousion in Athanasius
indicates ‘the interpenetration, or rather the unity (enótes) and identity
(tautótes) of the Son with the Father: tautótes tes theótetos, enótes tes
ousías’.45 Athanasius, as Milano writes,

39.
Ibid.
40.
Cf. ibid., pp. 109–10.
41.
In other words, recognising the ontological content of the person as the
hypostasis of being.
42.
J.N.D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, (London: A. & C. Black, 1968
[1960]), p. 239.
43.
Ibid., p. 247.
44.
Ibid., p. 245; Athanasius, Against the Arians, III.6 (PG 26, 332B). The
Athanasian text reads: ἡ θεότης καὶ ἡ ἰδιότης τοῦ Πατρὸς τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Ὑιοῦ
ἐστι – ‘the divinity and property of the Father is the being of the Son’.
45.
Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 112; cites Athanasius, Against the Arians,
I.18 (PG 26, 48C) and III.5 (PG 26, 332B); Letters to Serapion, Ep. II.3 (PG
26, 612B). There have been many attempts to understand homoousion on
personalist grounds. Milano mentions H. Mühlen, La mutabilità di Dio
come orizzonte di una cristologia futura (Brescia: Queriniana, 1974), p. 29,
who talks about ‘an ineffably intensive I-Thou relationship’. I would also
Athanasius 21

made great use of the term ousía, but never felt the need to
determine exactly what it means. He often understood it to
mean the unique essence of the Father and the Son, shared
by the former with the latter. However, for Athanasius,
the divine ousía remains incomprehensible. The Nicene
expression ek tes ousías tou theoû for him indicates nothing
other than the biblical ek tou theoû (De decr. ni. syn. 25: PG 25,
456AB). While referring to Ex 3:14 (‘I am who I am’) and Ex
20:2 (‘I am the Lord your God’), Athanasius connects ousía
to theós and therefore to the very being of God, ineffable in
‘what he is’ and therefore in content, but known to us in the
fact ‘that he is’, in his very simple existence (Ad Afr. 4: PG 26,
1036AB).46

Zizioulas insists on this aspect of the expression ‘from the Father’

replacing that of ‘from the Father’s ousia’ to underline the validity of
his thesis concerning an increasingly personalist patristic approach to
understanding the trinitarian being.
In view of this, one can consider with Zizioulas that ‘the tendency
to prefer the theology of St Athanasius from among the Greek Fathers
and juxtapose it to that of the Cappadocians’47 should be questioned,
if not rejected. In this sense, a question arises: if the meaning of the
expression ‘from the ousia of the Father’ is to be considered connected
to, or even equivalent to, the expression ‘from the Father’, could the
ousia in Athanasius’ view have indicated the Aristotelian ousia prōtē,
or better the hypostasis, according to the sense that the Cappadocians
were to attribute to this term, namely, that of ‘concrete entity’ or,
more precisely still, of ‘person’? It is difficult to give an answer. The
synonymous use of the two terms in Nicaea makes this hypothesis
plausible, which moreover means that the Constantinopolitan Creed is
a deepening and not just a rather substantial correction of the Nicene
Creed. All this would also be confirmed by the fact that the latter talks

draw attention to N. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness? St Maximus

the Confessor and John Zizioulas on Person, Nature and Will’, Participatio:
Journal of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological Fellowship 4 (2013), pp. 258–
86. In controversy with Zizioulas, Loudovikos states that in the Fathers
homoousion is to be understood as the eternal circulation of substance (cf.
ibid., p. 268), a movement of nature (cf. ibid., p. 269).
46.
Milano, Persona in teologia, pp. 111–12.
47.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 124.
22 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

about the ‘ousia of the Father’, so that, if by this expression a ‘divine

paternal substance’ is meant, which is possessed only by the Father,
or is identified only with the Father, as Eunomius claimed, one would
have to admit three distinct ousiai in God, something that Athanasius
firmly rejected.48
On the basis of what has been said, the Cappadocians’ development
of Athanasius would be in essence. This is confirmed by scholars
such as G.L. Prestige, who recognises that for Athanasius ‘the Son
is a presentation of the divine substance by derivation and in real
distinction’.49 Explaining what is implicit in Athanasius, it may be said
that substance is brought back not only to the datum of equality in the
divinity, but also to that of otherness in the divinity and to that of unity
in the divinity.
In line with Zizioulas, it is therefore clear not only that Nicaea’s use
of the term homoousion has only a negative and apophatic meaning,
but also that Athanasius’ reflection goes further. Although Athanasius’
doctrine of homoousion does not represent the most advanced stage
of patristic trinitarian understanding, it does lay the groundwork for
it. These developments are of great importance in that they present
substance as a notion that expresses the relational dynamic in the Trinity
triggered by the Father: as Prestige says, ‘the Son is a presentation of the
divine substance, derived and truly distinct’. This view leads Zizioulas
to conclude that ‘it is, in fact, in and through this otherness, and in no
other way, that substance in God is dynamic and relational’.50
What follows is that Zizioulas seeks a deeper understanding of God’s
ontology, one that does not retreat into apophaticism about revealed data.
The latter cannot exclude any of the aspects of the divine being – will
and nature – on which Athanasius focused. A thorough consideration
of will in relation to nature cannot be limited to the statement of the
‘static’ coexistence of the two terms just mentioned – ‘God is free by
nature and this is not a necessity for him’ – and cannot overlook the
dogmatic datum of the Father as the cause of the Trinity, affirmed in

48.
It is for this reason, as Zizioulas notes, that Athanasius always refuses
to add persons; cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 174; Zizioulas refers to
Athanasius, Against the Arians I.17 and I.40 (PG 26, 48A; 96A).
49.
Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, p. 218.
50.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 131. Zizioulas observes that the affirmation of
the consubstantial Trinity did not take place before the Second Council of
Constantinople in 553.
The Cappadocians 23

particular by the Cappadocians. Zizioulas’ reflection consists precisely

on how to think about freedom in relation to nature in God, so far as
this is possible for the human mind.

The Cappadocians: The Ontological View of

Hypostasis as Tropos Hyparxeōs of Ousia
The points that Athanasius left unresolved for Zizioulas were the
following: first, the question of the world’s ontological foundation,
that is, of the otherness that comes from the will of God;51 second, the
understanding of the ontological nature of the Son’s otherness, that is,
of the otherness that comes from the Father’s ousia, ‘the otherness in the
very substance of God’;52 and third, the question of the synonymy of the
terms hypostasis and ousia.
According to Zizioulas, the theological solution to the question of
the ontological nature of the ‘person’ as apprehended in the Trinity was
provided by the doctrine of the ontological monarchy of the Father,
but this could not be elaborated without a semantic clarification of the
terms hypostasis and ousia, which are the fundamental ontological
notions for the Cappadocians. I shall therefore first focus on Zizioulas’
understanding of the term ousia/homoousion in the Cappadocians,
and on how the Cappadocians received the term from Athanasius and
classical philosophy. I shall then focus on the term hypostasis, and
its meaning for the Cappadocians and Zizioulas. The identification
of hypostasis with prosōpon by the Cappadocians is significant for an
understanding of hypostasis as person, and of person as a relational
notion, but not as decisive as Zizioulas believes.

The Terminological Distinction between Ousia and Hypostasis

As we have seen, Zizioulas pointed out that even with Athanasius the terms
ousia and hypostasis coincided in meaning, indicating now the individual
essence, now the common essence. In fact, Athanasius avoided the term
hypostasis in trinitarian contexts, since this term, being synonymous with
ousia, gave rise to interpretations of God as a single hypostasis in the sense
of a single person. Zizioulas looks at the great changes that took place
in theology after Nicaea and feels the urgency to clarify the meaning of
the trinitarian statements mentioned in connection with Athanasius. In

51.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 74–75.
52.
Ibid., p. 75.
24 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

particular, it was a question of finding a way to express clearly the unity

of the divinity and the distinction of the Three in order to avoid both
subordinationist and modalist positions. A major difficulty was due to the
substantialist language derived from Greek philosophy. In it, substance,
understood as the primary ontological category, meant that, when
attempting to express the divine unity, one was exposed to the risk of
modalist interpretations (a divine ousia, in the sense of a hypostasis, that
of the Father), whereas, when attempting to express the particularity of
the Three, one was exposed to the risk of subordinationist interpretations
(three ousiai, three hypostaseis, three gods).
Zizioulas refers several times to the development of dogma and
in particular to the contribution of the Cappadocians. They found
themselves responding to the challenge of Sabellianism, which
affirmed a single hypostasis in God (the Three are ways in which God
reveals himself in oikonomia) and to the challenge of Eunomianism,
which identified the hypostasis of the Father, and therefore his being
ingenerate, with the divine ousia, thus placing the Son and the Holy
Spirit in a subordinate position. In order to clarify the consubstantiality
of the Three and their distinction, the Cappadocians, as we know, made
a terminological distinction between ousia and hypostasis. We shall
see below how this distinction, in Zizioulas’ view, is inscribed in the
framework of a new ontology that he defines as relational, personal,
Trinitarian, of love, erotic, of freedom etc., in which the two terms
come to coincide in meaning. However, if the coincidence of ousia
and hypostasis is of fundamental importance to Zizioulas, the no less
important question of their distinction must first be addressed.53
It is well known that the Cappadocians, heirs of the Homoiousian
tradition,54 began their Trinitarian reflection on the basis of the three
hypostaseis and, through the distinction between hypostasis and ousia,
came to recognise in the Trinity mia ousia and treis hypostaseis.55
Zizioulas notes that the first to have formally posited the distinction

53.
Zizioulas insists a great deal on both the distinction and the coincidence
of the two terms. Some critics of Zizioulas mostly read the distinction
as opposition and do not adequately emphasise the coincidence (cf. for
example, Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’).
54.
Which was the case with those who, like Basil of Ancyra, believed that the
Son was similar (homoios) according to substance.
55.
As Zizioulas summarises, for the Cappadocians, a single Deity exists
undivided in three modes of being or hypostaseis. These three coincide fully
with the same and unique ousia (cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 107).
The Cappadocians 25

between ousia and hypostasis was Basil of Caesarea. The explanation of

this distinction is quite clear: ousia (substance), or physis (nature), came
to mean the Aristotelian second substance, the general category that
applies to several concrete beings, whereas the latter were designated
by hypostasis.56 Basil writes: ‘Ousia and hypostasis are distinguished
in exactly the same way as the universal [κοινόν] and the particular,
just as, for example, man, as a genus, is distinguished from particular
men.’57 However, Zizioulas goes on to recall the Basilian example of
the case of several men and a single human nature, and brings out
the objection that arises when, in the case of God, three gods must be
admitted.58 This shows how this conception of hypostasis and ousia is
to be refined in the case of God. It will be seen that the above objection
will be resolved by the Cappadocians, according to Zizioulas, by better
specifying the meaning of the two terms, and affirming the ontological
primacy of the former over the latter. In any case, Zizioulas points out
that the distinction between hypostasis and ousia was affirmed by Basil
in order to avoid the Sabellian and Eunomian interpretation, since three
particular beings, characterised by ontological fullness and integrity,
are clearly affirmed.59 This point is very significant and raises questions.
If one term is to be distinguished from the other, what is the ontology
that opens up on the basis of this distinction? What role should be given
to one and the other in this ontology?
As proof of the inadequacy of the understanding of the triune being
on the basis of the Basilian distinction of the two terms, there remained
the thorny problem represented by the accusation of tritheism, since the
image of three particularities sharing what is common to them, what
is general or universal, was inadequate to guarantee divine unity and
oneness. It is for this reason that the Cappadocians, as Zizioulas notes,
deepened their understanding of the notion of hypostasis and ousia,
focusing among other things on hypostasis and in particular on the
hypostasis of the Father.
On the basis of what has been said about the distinction between ousia
and hypostasis, an elementary observation must be made: both terms
express God’s being, so it is difficult for a theological proposal to avoid

56.
Cf. ibid., p. 158.
57.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 236.6 (PG 32, 884A).
58.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood: Appreciating Cappadocian Contribution’,
in Communion and Otherness, pp. 155–70, here at p. 158. Zizioulas cites
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 236.6 (PG 32, 884) and Ep. 38.5 (PG 32, 333–36).
59.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 157.
26 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

an adequate recourse to both terms. There are, however, two points that
need clarification. The first, which has already emerged above, is whether
the Cappadocians really did move the understanding of the notion of
ousia from the Athanasian ousia – connoted ‘personally’, in that ‘the Son
belongs to the substance of the Father’ – to the more generic ‘that which
is universal’.60 The second is whether the shift in the understanding of
God’s unity from the divine ousia to the Father’s hypostasis reveals a
‘personalist’ hermeneutic as opposed to a ‘substantialist’ one, or whether
it supports better the understanding of the theological meaning attributed
by the Fathers to substance. Ultimately, it will be a matter of examining
Zizioulas’ interpretative framework, so to speak – the continuity
within the discontinuity between ‘substantialist’ Athanasian language
and ‘personalist’ Cappadocian language, as Zizioulas himself attests,
when he states that, if ‘substantialist language in theology was being
gradually replaced by that of the person’,61 it is because ‘the relational
sense of substance in Athanasius will lead, through the thought of the
Cappadocian Fathers, to the ontology of the Person’.62

Ousia: General Meanings

In his reading of patristic trinitarian theology, Zizioulas touches several
times on the question of the meaning and the role attributed by the
Fathers to ousia, although not in an in-depth and systematic way. While,
on the one hand, his apophatic attitude towards ousia leads him to focus
more on the terms hypostasis and prosōpon, on the other hand, it is
possible to find in his writings a precise understanding of the position
of the Cappadocians (which will be examined in the next section). In the
following paragraphs, I shall present the general meanings of the notion
of ousia that he refers to.
Ousia as ‘that which is unknowable’: A first fundamental meaning
of ousia is that which concerns its unknowability. According to the
patristic datum carefully taken into account especially in the Orthodox

60.
Thus, is it really the case that for Zizioulas substance is only that which is
identical – ‘sameness’ – in the Three, as Loudovikos believes (cf. ‘Possession
or Wholeness?’, p. 268)? Moreover, does Zizioulas’ assertion that freedom is
understood (also) as freedom from equality reveal a negative conception of
divine ousia (cf. ibid.)? These questions will be addressed in chapter three.
61.
Communion and Otherness, p. 182.
62.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 77.
The Cappadocians 27

sphere, absolute apophaticism must be maintained with regard to ousia

and the relationship between it and the hypostaseis,63 since it is a mystery
that is beyond human reason.64
Ousia as ‘that which is self-subsistent’: A second meaning of ousia, in
line with Greek thought, that Zizioulas traces back to the teaching of
the Cappadocians, is to indicate that stable and immutable factor proper
to any being, that which is ‘self-subsistent’.65 However, unlike Greek
thought, the self-subsistence of ousia, especially in Nazianzen, does not
mean that it represents an entity that subsists without hypostasis – since
the two terms are not separable.
Ousia as ‘what’ a thing is: According to the Cappadocian distinction,
the notion of being answers the question ‘what’ (τί) a being is and ‘how’
(ὅπως, πῶς) a being is.66 The first term is approached by the Cappadocians
as ousia, the second as hypostasis. This means that both the one, ousia,
and the other, hypostasis, denote being: ‘The three persons of the Trinity
denote God’s being just as much as the term “substance”.’67 Furthermore,
considering that ousia denotes what is common and hypostasis what is
particular, and that the hypostatic and natural properties coinhere in each
other68 – on the basis that, according to the Cappadocian assumption,
‘there is no ousia without hypostasis and vice versa’69 – Zizioulas is led to
conclude that ‘the two taken together constitute what we call “being” ’.70

63.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 56; with reference to Gregory of
Nazianzus, Oratio 2 (PG 35, 407–514).
64.
Cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 25.
65.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 57.
66.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 125); Zizioulas cites Basil of Caesarea,
Contra Eunomium, I.14–15 (PG 29, 544–45); Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 93–96). An extended treatment of this point is offered
in Περί Δογματικής και δογμάτων: Μαθήματα ετών 1984–85, S. Pavlidis
(ed.), pp. 98ff, at: https://elearningtheology.fi les.wordpress.com/2010/07/
ceb9cf89ceaccebdcebdcebfcf85-ceb6ceb7ceb6ceb9cebfcf8dcebbceb1.pdf
(accessed 3 February 2019).
67.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 125).
68.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor’, in M.
Vasiljevic (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection
(Alhambra, CA: 2013), pp. 85–113, here at p. 88.
69.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 91.
70.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 86; my italics.
28 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Ousia as a notion used to illustrate the creation-increation dialectic:

Ousia represents what it is possible to point to without referring to any
other essence or something else besides it. Even if ousia is held in common
by several beings, it is possible to speak of it without referring to any
other essence besides it.71 Ousia, in this sense, ‘indicates the boundaries
that differentiate one thing from another’.72 One understands, therefore,
how this meaning is used to distinguish the created from the uncreated.
This is a very important aspect for the Fathers and one to which Zizioulas
has drawn attention:

for Gregory [of Nyssa] divine substance indicates the unity of

the three persons of the Trinity not as such but in so far as it
points to the dialectic between created and uncreated reality.
Speculation about divine substance per se is not only absent
but impermissible in Greek patristic thought.73

What he is saying is that for the Fathers speculation on the divine

nature per se is meaningless and therefore not conducted, and this is
true of both Nicene and Cappadocian theology. This does not mean,
however, that the Fathers did not reflect on the divine nature with
reference to the divine hypostaseis.
Ousia as ‘universal abstract’: Zizioulas addresses the question of the
semantic mutation of the term ousia that the Fathers made, compared
to classical Greek philosophy. In this regard, Zizioulas takes up the
teaching of Maximus the Confessor for whom physis indicated for the
Greek philosophers the principle of movement and rest, for the Fathers
the genus that unites its members; ousia indicated for the philosophers
the self-existent object that needs nothing else to be constituted, for the

71.
Cf. ibid. Zizioulas cites Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36,
93–96). In this passage Nazianzen does not use the term self-subsistence,
he simply talks about the Father who produces what is of his own essence.
Zizioulas goes on to say that, if the essence is what is self-subsistent, the
person subsists in his being related to other beings.
72.
σημαίνει πάντοτε τά ὄρια πού διαφοροποιοῦν κάτι ἀπό κάτι ἄλλο
(«Χριστολογὶα καὶ Ὕπαρξη: Συνέχεια τῆς συζητήσεως ἀπό τόν καθηγητή
Ἰω: Ζηζιούλα», Synaxē 6 [1983], pp. 77–85, at p. 80).
73.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 183. The passage of
Nyssen that Zizioulas cites in support of his thesis is Gregory of Nyssa,
Contra Eunomium, I.36 (PG 45, 336f.).
The Cappadocians 29

Fathers the natural being of many hypostaseis.74 From this Zizioulas

concludes that ousia or physis has passed from indicating the concrete
object to indicating the universal abstract.75 This is a statement that needs
to be understood thoroughly.76 Leaving aside the fact that Aristotle’s
ousia deutera could already be understood as a universal abstract,
Zizioulas shows how the Fathers no longer understood a particular,
concrete being – a human person or a divine person – as ousia, but in
reference to hypostasis,77 and increasingly as hypostasis itself.78 On the
basis of this, ousia is understood as a concrete reality, and therefore not
as a universal abstract, as a hypostasised ousia. Indeed, Zizioulas states
that ousia ‘abandons its abstract character’.79 Ultimately, the ousia,
considered in its anhypostasised state, is to be considered as an abstract,
in the fundamental sense of non-existent (ἀνυπόστατον is equivalent
to ἀνύπαρκτον, Zizioulas observes with reference to Maximus).80
Hypostasised ousia, on the other hand, is not a universal abstract, but
a concrete reality; it indicates being at the level of ‘what’ a thing is and,

74.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 89; Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola
Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum, 16 (PG 91, 276A). It will be seen how
Zizioulas employs the term self-existence in two meanings. The first refers
to ousia according to the meaning of ancient Greek philosophy, i.e. as a
monistic reality; the second refers to hypostasis according to the patristic
meaning, and indicates the ontological priority over ousia, not as a monistic
but as a relational reality.
75.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 89.
76.
It has been criticised by Loudovikos (cf. ‘Possession or Wholeness?’) because
in his view it diminishes the ontological status of ousia.
77.
Basil states that ‘if therefore they say that the prosōpa are without hypostasis,
this statement in itself is absurd’ (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 24.4 [PG 32,
789B]).
78.
Cf. ‘Hypostasis as a Particular Being’, below. In this sense, Loudovikos’
criticism that Zizioulas ‘defines nature as an abstract universal, while
person is the only real being’ (Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’,
p. 262), is not objectionable. This question will be discussed later in this
chapter.
79.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 90. In this regard, Zizioulas writes: ‘these Fathers
[the Cappadocians and the Confessor] refer positively to nature either as a
universal concept or as a normative state (κατὰ φύσιν)’ (ibid., p. 107).
80.
Cf. ibid., p. 89; Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 24 (PG 91,
1261D). In this passage, Maximus does not mention the term ἀνύπαρκτον.
30 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

as such, has ontological content and precisely being apprehended not

in its particular characters, but general, however graspable, only and
exclusively from a particular being.81

Ousia: What Is Common to the Three as Koinōnia/

Koinōnia kata Physin
We come now to the fundamental theological meaning that Zizioulas
traces in Basil especially. Ousia indicates what is common to several
beings, in the precise sense, in the case of the Trinity, of koinōnia kata
physin. I examine first the affirmation of ousia as that which is common
and then the notion of koinōnia kata physin and the identification of this
with ‘that which is common’.
Ousia as ‘what is common’: As mentioned above, according to Zizioulas,
for the Greek Fathers since Basil, ousia and hypostasis represent the
two fundamental terms of ontology. In particular, ousia expresses what
is common (κοινόν) – ‘the term commonality refers to ousia’82 – what is

81.
Kelly states that for the Cappadocians ‘the ousia of the Godhead was not an
abstract essence but a concrete reality’ (Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines,
p. 268). This is based directly on the Fathers. We read in Ep. 38: ‘the indefinite
meaning of substance, which finds no stability because of the generality of
the common meaning’ (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.3 [PG 32, 328B]). The
attribution of Ep. 38 to Basil, as is well known, is controversial. Recently,
some eminent scholars have argued, not without validity, that Gregory of
Nyssa was the author. In his early writings, Zizioulas attributed it to Basil
(cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 91), later he addressed this issue by stating that, for the purposes
of his reflection, it is ‘irrelevant’ (cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance
of the Person’, p. 189]). Sometimes, therefore, it is quoted without the
author’s name or, more recently, with the double name, ‘Basil ( Gregory
of Nyssa)’ (cf. ‘Relational Ontology: Insights from Patristic Thought’, in J.
Polkinghorne (ed.), The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality
in Physical Science and Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010],
pp. 146–56, at p. 148); or, again with the double name, but with a question
mark after that of Nyssen, ‘Basil ( Gregory of Nyssa?)’ (‘Person and Nature’,
p. 90). This question is important, but the subject of the present study is the
trinitarian personalist ontology of Zizioulas, so it is in fact irrelevant here.
On that basis, and for the sake of consistency, I maintain Zizioulas’ custom
of placing Ep. 38 next to Basil’s name.
82.
[K]οινότητος λόγος εἰς τὴν οὐσίαν ἀνάγεται (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.5
[PG 32, 336C]).
The Cappadocians 31

general, but also what is indivisible, and it is possessed, in the case of

both the Trinity and creation in its undecayed state, ‘full, undivided’83
by hypostasis. The latter expresses what is particular.84 In this framework,
substance, ‘what is common’, could be understood as a universal abstract
such as gender (eidos), but this meaning, as Zizioulas shows, is discarded
by Basil in the case of the Father and the Son.85
For the Cappadocians, hypostasised substance is not a universal
abstract; it exists only as hypostasis86 and as such represents a reality
characterised by a complex of ‘natural properties’,87 that is, common
and at the same time not reducible to the latter. If it is true in fact that
‘that which is common’, which determines the equality – ‘sameness’ –
of the Three, is the commonality of the properties common to the
hypostasis – such as divinity, holiness, omnipotence, eternity, goodness
etc. – these properties can be apprehended and understood by the
hypostasis itself. These properties can be apprehended and understood
only in their hypostasised status, that is, in their being part of the reality
of the hypostaseis. This Zizioulan thesis is founded, for example, in
Nyssen, according to whom the Son:

83.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 106). Zizioulas
also uses the expression ‘in its totality’ (ibid., p. 107). Basil writes: ‘nature
is undivided … through both [the Father and the Son] one aspect is
observed, which is integrally manifested in both’ – ἡ φύσις ἀμέριστος …
δι᾽ἀμφοτέρων ἕν εἶδος θεωρεῖται ὁλοκλήρως ἐν ἀμφοτέροις δεικνύμενον
(Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 (PG 31, 608C).
84.
Cf. ‘On Being Other, p. 56; Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 236.6 (PG 32, 884A); Ep.
38.1.5 (PG 32, 325f.); Amphilochius of Iconium, Sententiae et Excerpta,
15 (PG 39, 112CD); Maximus the Confessor, Ep. 15 (PG 91, 545A); John
Damascene, Contra Iacobitas, 52 (PG 94, 1461A).
85.
‘Therefore, in what way was it not pious to compare one who has no eidos
[the Son] with him [the Father] who has no eidos?’ (Basil of Caesarea,
Contra Eunomium, I.23 [PG 29, 561C]).
86.
‘For nothing is homoousion in itself, but [as] other to the other’ (Basil of
Caesarea, Ep. 52.3 [PG 32, 393C]); cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 90. Basil goes
on to affirm that homoousion defines both the proper character of hypostaseis
and the general character of ousia, and to bring the discourse to bear on the
generation of the Son from the substance of the Father and on the fact that
this takes place neither by subdivision of ousia nor mechanically as a flow
(cf. ibid. [PG 32, 393C-96A]).
87.
φύσιν ἰδιότητος (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.5 [PG 32, 336AB]).
32 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

is incorruptible insofar as he is in the incorruptibility of the

Father, and is good insofar as he is in his goodness, and is
powerful insofar as he is in his power, and since he is in every
reality thought of in the Father according to the notion of
the best, he is that reality, and therefore he is also completely
eternal in [the Father’s] eternity.88

Substance, endowed with natural properties such as incorruptibility,

is characterised by hypostasis (Nyssen distinguishes between the
incorruptibility of the Father and that of the Son) and by hypostatic
derivation (the Son is incorruptible insofar as he is in the incorruptibility
of the Father).89 This being the case, it is necessary to think of natural
properties as relational, dynamic realities.90 In this sense, one
understands Zizioulas’ notation, according to which substance is what
expresses the general, where the term ‘general’ indicates what is ‘held in
common’91 and therefore implies a reality of several beings in relation
to each other that ‘hold’ in common what they have in common.92 What
is ‘held’ in common is ultimately not a set of properties understood
abstractly or statically but relationally, as relational is the character of
the substance Zizioulas spoke of in reference to Athanasius – the Son
belongs to the divine substance – or, in similar terms, of the substance
as Basilian koinōnia kata physin, as will be seen shortly.

88.
Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 8 (PG 45, 772CD).
89.
In this sense, if it is difficult to accept Chrysostom Koutloumousianos’ idea
concerning a close identification, according to the Cappadocians, of the
nature and the being of God (remember that both the ‘what’, the ousia, and the
‘how’, the hypostasis, together indicate being). Cf. C. Koutloumousianos,
The One and the Three: Nature, Person and Triadic Monarchy in the Greek and
Irish Patristic Tradition, Foreword by A. Louth (Cambridge: James Clarke &
Co., 2015), p. 180, n. 77; J. Zachhuber, ‘Ousia (οὐσία)’, in L.F. Mateo-Seco
and G. Maspero (eds), The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, trans. by S.
Cherney (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010), pp. 562–67.
90.
When I address the question of freedom in the Trinity in chapter three, I
shall also discuss more obscure Zizioulan passages in which this ‘equality’
may seem to indicate a static and necessary reality.
91.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 51. Elsewhere Zizioulas states that
‘substance is communicated among the three persons’ (Communion and
Otherness, p. 160).
92.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 51.
The Cappadocians 33

For Zizioulas, on this basis, it is by virtue of the relational character

of the substance that it is possible to understand its properties such as
holiness, omnipotence, goodness etc. In other words, it is possible to
speak of these properties insofar as they pertain to a relational ousia,
which is such insofar as it is hypostasised by the Three, each in its own
specific way.93 This is attested, according to Zizioulas, by the fact that the
Cappadocians understood ousia as a general category, which applies to
several hypostaseis, not in the sense of a presupposed ousia ‘pre-existing
or logically preceding’ the divine persons.94 Thus, a Platonic, ideal and
ultimately ‘static’ conception of ‘ousia as a general category’, foreign to
the trinitarian hypostatic-relational dynamic, is excluded: equality –
sameness – indicates neither abstractness nor static nature.
Ousia as koinonia: This brings me to the last aspect, perhaps the
most delicate and controversial, of Zizioulas’ patristic reading of ousia.
Zizioulas writes:

one of the striking peculiarities of St Basil’s teaching on God,

compared with that of St Athanasius and certainly with that
of the Western Fathers, is that he seems to be rather unhappy
with the notion of substance as an ontological category and
tends to replace it – significantly enough for our subject here –
with that of κοινωνία. Instead of speaking of the unity of God
in terms of His one nature, he prefers to speak of it in terms
of the communion of persons: communion is for Basil an
ontological category. The nature of God is communion. This
does not mean that the persons have an ontological priority
over the one substance of God, but that the one substance of
God coincides with the communion of the three persons.95

93.
Zizioulas, referring to the Fathers, writes that ‘It is the person [hypostasis for
now] that ‘hypostasises’ (or gives existence to) nature’ (‘Person and Nature’,
p. 112).
94.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159.
95.
‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, in Being as Communion, pp. 123–42, at
p. 134 (originally published in Italian for a conference organised in 1980 by
the University of Louvain and the Institute of Religious Sciences of Bologna,
on the perspectives in ecclesiology after the Second Vatican Ecumenical
Council, under the title ‘Cristologia, pneumatologia e istituzioni
ecclesiastiche: un punto di vista ortodosso’, translated from English by
M. Davitti, Cristianesimo nella Storia 2 [1981], pp. 111–27). Zizioulas cites
Basil’s words : ‘the unity [of God] resides in the koinōnia tēs theotētos’ – ἐν
34 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Here he takes up Letter 38 because he finds in it the juxtaposition

of the terms koinon (common, shared in common), koinotēs (shared
in common), koinotēta (community) and koinōnia (community,
communion, connection, commonality, participation) with theotēta
(divinity), ousia and physis, and from this he concludes that they are
used to express the divine essence.96 This thesis raises two questions.
The first is to establish what Basil means by koinōnia and the
expressions related to it, such as κατὰ τὴν οὐσίαν κοινότητος,97 φύσεως
κοινωνίαν,98 κοινωνία κατά φύσιν,99 ἀχωρίστου κοινωνίας.100 The second
is to establish whether indeed for Basil the divine nature consists in
communion – in the modern sense, i.e. relational, as understood by
Zizioulas – understood as an ontological category.
With regard to the term koinōnia, it is possible at a semantic level to
attribute to it a more ‘personalist’ meaning: it indicates ‘that which is
common’, in the sense of that which is ‘shared’ and therefore also in the
sense of ‘communion’, ‘society’.101 In this sense, the term koinōnia, unlike

τῇ κοινωνίᾳ τῆς θεότητός ἐστιν ἡ ἕνωσις (Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu

Sancto, 18.45 [PG 32, 149C]). In support of his reading, Zizioulas mentions
the study by A. Jevtich, ‘Between the “Niceans” and the “Easterners”: The
Catholic Confession of St Basil’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 24
(1980), p. 244.
96.
Cf. ‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, p. 184.
97.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 (PG 32, 333A).
98.
Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 13.30 (PG 32, 121A).
99.
Ibid., 26.63 (PG 32, 184B); cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the
Person’, p. 184.
100.
Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 26.63 (PG 32, 184B).
101.
‘So, where there is a connatural and inseparable koinōnia, the most
effective term to express it is with, which suggests the idea of an indivisible
koinōnia’ – Ὥστε ὅπου μὲν οἰκεία καὶ συμφυὴς ἡ κοινωνία, σημαντικωτέρα
φωνὴ ἡ σὺν – τῆς ἀχωρίστου κοινωνίας τὴν διάνοιαν ὑποβάλλουσα (ibid.).
At the intra-trinitarian level, the term κοινὸς can be translated as ‘that
which is shared in common’; κοινότης as ‘sharing in common’; κοινωνία
as ‘communion’, ‘act of sharing’ (cf. G.W.H. Lampe (ed.), A Patristic Greek
Lexicon [Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994], pp. 761–64). These
meanings are different from the more static, abstract or impersonal one
of ‘commonality’. We note that the term ‘sharing’ implies the idea of a
subdivision and is therefore problematic in the trinitarian context. A
similar problem is noted by Zizioulas for the term ‘participation’ (cf. ‘On
Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 107). The terms derived
The Cappadocians 35

ousia, ‘lends itself to a wider use which would include the community
of glorification and honour, which is so important to Basil, as well as
the distinctiveness of the hypostases’.102 With regard to the term ousia,
in Basil it indicates the essence, what is common to every hypostasis,
what is fully and equally possessed by the Three and what makes them a
unity of ousia, a koinōnia tēs theotētos,103 one thing, en.104 Nevertheless,
we have seen that Basil has discarded, in the case of God, the generic
meaning of ousia in terms of gender (eidos) since, as Prestige confirms,
‘the identity of the divine ousia in the several Persons is therefore not, in
Basil’s view, a matter of their belonging to a single species, but of their
several expressions unimpaired of an identical single ousia’.105 While it
cannot be said that Basil claims that the expression koinōnia tēs theotētos
indicates ‘relational communion’, as Zizioulas claims, it is possible to
admit that it indicates some ‘dynamism common to the Three’, as Basil
suggests when he speaks, in relation to God, of ‘a united differentiation,
a differentiated unity’.106 According to André de Halleux, the term
koinōnia is not used by Basil in the modern sense of interpersonal
relational communion, but simply as a synonym for homoousion, of
common nature.107 However, as Zizioulas recalls, and will be taken up
again later, homoousion indicates for Basil not a reality ‘in itself’, but
the ‘being other to the other’108 – namely, the being generated by the

from the root koinos (koinōnia, koinōnein, koinōnos, koinōnikos) indicate,

according to their scriptural usage, ‘common participation’; in the Greek
world, ‘that which pertains to the various groupings or associations of
citizens’. The closest Hebrew root to koinos is hbr. Although few of its
mentions are translated with terms from the koinos group, it is used to
describe the ‘bond of unity of the people (as in Ezekiel 37:16f.)’.
102.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 184.
103.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 18.45 (PG 32, 153A-56A);
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 184.
104.
Cf. Milano, Persona in teologia, pp. 121–22.
105.
Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 229–30; cf. Basil of Caesarea,
Contra Eunomium, I.23 (PG 29, 561–64).
106.
[Δ]ιάκρισίν τε συνημμένην, καὶ διακεκριμένην συνάφειαν (Basil of
Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 [PG 32, 333A]).
107.
Cf. A. de Halleux, ‘Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères
cappadociens? Une mauvaise controverse’, Revue Theologique de Louvain 17,
no. 2 (1986), pp. 129–55 (esp. pp. 142–48); 17, no. 3 (1986), pp. 265–92.
108.
[E]τερον ἑτέρῳ (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 52.3 [PG 32, 393C]; ‘Person and
Nature’, p. 90).
36 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Son from the substance of the Father, neither by subdivision of ousia

nor mechanically in the manner of a flow.109 Unlike de Halleux, Milano
maintains that ‘divine indivisibility, once thought of as the negation
of divisibility represented “cosily”, now becomes the indivision of the
communion or ousia of divine subsistences or hypostáseis’.110 Kallistos
Ware, in line with Zizioulas and Colin E. Gunton, writes:

Whereas St Athanasius talks about God’s unity primarily in

terms of substance or essence, assigning central significance
to the word homoousios, ‘consubstantial’, Basil and the other
Cappadocians prefer to express God’s unity in terms of
communion between the three hypostaseis or persons.111

Johannes Zachhuber notes the presence of the Basilian juxtaposition

of the notion of ousia with that of koinōnia also in Nyssen: ‘the use
of ousia in his trinitarian theology coincides in practice exclusively
with the use of ousia on the level of the communion of the trinitarian
Persons’.112 Koinōnia, as a synonym of homoousia, would then indicate
the being common to the Three, apprehended according to its ‘what
is’, that is, according to its general characteristics, as a being other to
the other, coming from the Father. In this way, koinōnia, in the sense
of ousia, would in fact coincide with koinōnia in the Latin sense of
communio/communicatio, terms that from the point of view of semantic
analysis underline the relational aspect inherent in a common reality.113

109.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 52.3 (PG 32, 393C-96A).
110.
Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 130; my italics.
111.
K. Ware, ‘The Human Person as an Icon of the Trinity’, Sobornost 8, no. 2
(1986), pp. 6–23, here at p. 11; C. E. Gunton, ‘The One, the Three and the
Many’, Inaugural Lecture in the Chair of Christian Doctrine at Kings
College, London, 1985, pp. 10–11.
112.
Zachhuber, ‘Ousia (οὐσία)’, p. 565.
113.
The Latin term communio is used by Zizioulas himself (cf. ‘The Father as
Cause’, p. 116). Both communio and communicatio, like koinōnia, are terms
belonging to biblical language and classical thought. However, unlike
koinōnia – which remains, at least at the patristic level, more linked to the
essential level – they express more the relational character, and therefore
the Zizioulan patristic understanding, of koinōnia (which he uses as a
synonym of the English term ‘communion’). Zizioulas, however, does not
elaborate on the patristic meaning and use of the term communio. As Jean-
Marie Tillard has shown, it indicates (not deriving from cum and unio but
The Cappadocians 37

Therefore, if the identification between ousia and koinōnia, in the sense

indicated by the terms communio/communicatio, was never formally
stated by Basil, his theology opens the field to the highlighting in the
Trinity of the presence of both levels, the substantial and the relational,
and to the ever closer connection between them. In fact, observe what

from cum and munis) ‘that which distributes the task’ and in a certain sense
‘that which is distributed to all’. Communicatio indicates, consequently,
‘taking part in common’. Both are employed by the Vulgate as counterparts
of Greek terms from the root koinos. However, koinōnia and communicatio
are not entirely equivalent (cf. J.-M. Tillard, ‘Comunione’, trans. by U.
Marinucci, in J.Y. Lacoste (ed.), Dizionario critico di teologia, P. Coda
(Ital. ed.) (Rome: Borla-Città Nuova, 2005), pp. 316–17). Gisbert Greshake
shows how communio, which does not mean ‘union of one with another’,
can have two connotations. The first comes from considering the term
according to its Indo-Germanic root mun (trench, dam, embankment).
In this case, it indicates the finding of people together behind a trench,
i.e. united in a common existential reality that binds them in a common
life. Thus, those who are in communio are so because they are in/have a
third common reality. Considered according to the Latin root munus (task,
service, gift), the term means to put oneself at the service of another, to
give him a gift that shapes him and establishes a bond between the giver
and the receiver of the gift (cf. G. Greshake, ‘Trinity as “Communio” ’,
in Maspero and Wozniak (eds), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology,
pp. 331–45, here at pp. 333–4). Tillard, who does not consider the case of
the Indo-Germanic root, writes: ‘Normally, k. [koinōnia] insists more on
participation in a common reality, communicatio on the dynamism of the
gift, c. [communio] on the situation arising from it’ (ibid., p. 317). Therefore,
communio indicates taking ‘part’ (in the case of the Trinity, this term
must be used) in common as a situation that springs from communicatio,
that is, from a dynamic of gift. These terminological analyses show that,
on the trinitarian level, the common reality (the homoousion which Basil
expresses as koinōnia kata physin), in which the Three are in communio, is
not extraneous to communicatio, that is to the dynamic of the gift (initiated
by whom if not by the Father?); indeed, it springs from it. Ierotheos Vlachos,
now Metropolitan of Nafpaktos and Saint Vlasios, argues, however, that
it is not possible to speak of κοινωνία τῶν προσώπων (understanding the
term πρόσωπον as a synonym of ὑπόστασις) but only of κοινωνία κατά
φύση, since the κοινωνία, designating what is common to the Three, cannot
but concern only the φύσης (I. Vlachos, Μεταπατερική θεολογία καί
εκκλησιαστική πατερική εμπειρία [Lebadeia, 2012], pp. 294–96). Now, if by
38 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Gregory of Nyssa writes: ‘The Father and the Son are also one, inasmuch
as the koinōnia according to physis and according to decision combine
to form the one.’114 Nyssen expressly talks about ‘koinōnia according to
nature’ – ‘κατὰ τὴν φύσιν’, therefore pertaining to the substantial plane –
and ‘koinōnia according to decision’ - ‘κατὰ τὴν προαίρεσιν’, pertaining
to the hypostatic plane (we shall see below how the reference is to the
hypostasis of the Father). In this framework, no fracture exists between
the two. Koinōnia according to nature is juxtaposed to decision; koinōnia
according to decision is rooted not in contingency, but in nature. In fact,
Nyssen states that the unity between the Father and the Son ‘is indicated
on the level of nature by the reciprocal relationship of [their] two names’
and ‘nature is common through its [the Son’s] union with the Father’.115
On the basis of what has been said so far, the following question arises. If
Basil does not go so far as to formally define the communion of the divinity,
and therefore ousia, as ‘interpersonal dialogical relations’,116 can we not say
that, with the introduction of the term koinōnia, he has at least initiated
a new line of interpretation, in which the substantialist and personalist
meanings, both of ousia and koinōnia, become reciprocally precise as – so
to speak – ‘relational substance’ and ‘substantial koinōnia ( communion)’,
and therefore identify themselves?117 Moreover, de Halleux himself affirms

κοινωνία we mean ‘commonality’, Vlachos’ remark is in line with Zizioulas.

Given, in fact, the relational character of this term, the non-patristic
expression κοινωνία τῶν προσώπον does not contradict the Fathers and
their teaching on κοινωνία κατά φύση. The κοινωνία κατά φύση is, as it
were, τῶν προσώπον (or, if you like, the κοινωνία τῶν προσώπον is κατά
φύση).
114.
Καὶ ὁ Πατὴρ καὶ ὁ ἕν εἱσι, τῆς κατὰ τὴν φύσιν καὶ τὴν προαίρεσιν κοινωνίας
εἰς τὸ ἓν συνδραμούσης (Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I.62 [PG
45, 405B]; my italics).
115.
[Ὑ]πό τε τῶν ὀνομάτων φυσικῶς διὰ τῆς πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσεως
σημαινομένης … τὸ κοινὸν σημαίνει τῆς φύσεως διὰ τῆς πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα
ἑνότητος (ibid., I.61 [PG 45, 404C]).
116.
Cf. de Halleux, ‘Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères
cappadociens?’, p. 289.
117.
Zizioulas speaks precisely of ‘personalised’ or ‘hypostasised’ substance (cf.
‘On Being Other’, p. 65; ‘Person and Nature’, p. 94) and of communion as an
‘ontological category (cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 74). That
koinōnia comes to be identified with both ousia and communio seems to be
a fact accepted by various scholars. Tillard states: ‘Although the Scriptures
never affirm that God is c.-k. [ koinonia, in the sense of communio] of three
The Cappadocians 39

that, if it is improper to speak, with reference to the Cappadocians, of

personalism, according to the modern conception of the term, there is no
doubt that they laid the foundations for the Christian personalism of our
times.118 In any case, as in the case of Athanasius’ ‘relational substance’,
affirming that ‘the nature of God is communion’ does not mean for
Zizioulas a de-substantialisation of the notion of ousia, that is, that ‘the
place of substance is taken by interpersonal relations’, but the ontologising
of the notion of koinōnia ( communion), that is, that God’s being is
according to an ontological koinōnia ( communion).119 Thus, substance
is not abolished, but rather its monistic, objectivised understanding. If
anything, the objective for Zizioulas is to understand substance not as
necessary, and will and freedom, not primarily as the faculty of a being, but
as being; questions that will find a solution for Zizioulas in the ontological
monarchy of the Father.
Ousia in relation to divine unity: Zizioulas explicitly acknowledges
that the Cappadocians spoke of the divine substance in reference to the
unity of God. There are no specific patristic quotations on this in his
writings, but he points out that he is aware of it. Not only did the Fathers
speak of the divine substance in reference to the unity of God – one
thinks of Basil’s statement that ‘in the confession of the one divinity in
everything and for everything the unity is safeguarded’120 – but even of
God as substance, as in the case of Clement of Alexandria and Origen.121
For the Fathers, the expression ‘God is substance’ is therefore entirely
correct.122

persons, [with the Fathers] one will be incited by the Johannine tradition
(Jn 14:16; 16:7–15), Mt 28:19, and above all, by 2 Cor 13:13 (‘the grace of the
Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God and the k. of the Holy Spirit’) to make the
divine mystery the c.-k.’ (Tillard, ‘Comunione’, p. 320).
118.
Cf. de Halleux, ‘Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères
cappadociens?’, p. 291. We shall return to this point below. Its understanding
in the course of Zizioulas’ theological development should be clarified by
the end of the study.
119.
Cf. ‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, p. 134.
120.
[Ὥ]στε δι᾽ὄλου καὶ τὴν ἑνότητα σώζεσθαι ἐν τῇ τῆς μιᾶς θεότητος ὁμολογίᾳ
(Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 236 [PG 32, 884B]). It is an established fact that
for the Cappadocians the oneness of God is recognised in relation to nature
(cf. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 269).
121.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 64.
122.
Cf. G.C. Stead, Divine Substance (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977),
p. 275.
40 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

The point for Zizioulas is another, namely that, as Gregory of Nazianzus

writes, ‘the Three have one nature, namely God, since the Father is
the foundation of unity, from whom comes and to whom is led what
follows’.123 God is the one nature because, as Zizioulas observes, ‘God
as person – as hypostasis of the Father – makes the one divine substance
what it is, the one God’.124 In other words, God is ‘One by nature’, he is
‘Trinity by nature’, ‘the Godhead resides in the one nature’, and all this
is neither a necessary nor a contingent reality for God, by virtue of the
Father’s causality. This is the heart of the present study, which will be
dealt with in the next chapter according to Zizioulas’ patristic reading.
The role of ousia in relation to hypostasis: According to Zizioulas, for the
Fathers ousia is not the cause of particular being,125 as in Neoplatonism.126
However, there is a link between ousia and particular being: hypostasis
‘expresses its free particularity and identity not by opposing essence, but
by holding it in common’127 with the other hypostaseis. We have seen
how the meaning of the term koinōnia coincides for Basil with that of the
term ousia, or better, with that of homoousia, in the sense of ‘being other
to the other’. In this sense, this meaning is not in contradiction with the
more modern one attributed to it by Zizioulas, in close connection with
the relational character of ousia, that is, communion as ‘relational being’
that ‘generates’ otherness.128 From this he deduces that the holding in
common of ousia and koinōnia/communion is a constitutive aspect of
the particularity of hypostasis. Koutloumousianos also states a similar
concept. He observes that for Basil the character of hypostatic properties

123.
Φύσις δὲ τοῖς τρισὶ μία, Θεός. Ἕνωσις δὲ ὁ Πατήρ, ἐξ οὗ καὶ πρὸς ὃν
ἀνάγεται τὰ ἑξῆς (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 [PG 36, 476B];
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 118). We shall return in the next chapter to the
dogmatic aspects contained in this important statement by Nazianzen.
124.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 90.
125.
This is expressed, as I shall elaborate, by the term hypostasis.
126.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 90.
127.
«Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 17; here, Zizioulas is not
referring specifically to Basil but to his understanding of personhood based
on the Fathers. The being of the ousia ‘communicated’ among the Three (cf.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 160) is to
be understood precisely in the sense of the being ‘held in common’ of which
we are speaking.
128.
‘Communion et altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse 184 (1994), pp. 23–33,
at p. 28.
The Cappadocians 41

shows particularity in the identity of essence129 and comments that

‘thus, nature – in particular, connaturality – proves to be not only the
ground of sameness and unity but also the terra firma of otherness,
wholeness and equality’.130 This raises a question. How is it that holding
ousia and koinōnia/communion in common are constitutive aspects of
the particularity of hypostasis? If one understands, as Koutloumousianos
does, that ousia is the cause/principle of hypostasis, this does not seem to
be affirmed either in the passage from Basil just cited or in others.131 Basil
in fact states that ‘there is identity of essence in that the Son comes from
the Father’132 and not that ‘the Son comes from the Father in that there is

129.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, II.28 (PG 29, 637).
130.
Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three, p. 30.
131.
Koutloumousianos reiterates the same concept, citing the passage from
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 (PG 32, 332A), which is translated as follows:
‘In the communion of the essence we maintain that there is no mutual
approach or intercommunion of those properties perceived in the Trinity,
whereby the proper particularity of the persons is set forth’ (The One and the
Three, p. 47). The text sounds different: ‘in the communion of the essence,
the distinctive characteristics found in the Trinity are irreconcilable and
incommunicable, thanks to which the individuality of the persons is set
forth’ – Τούτου ἕνεκεν ἐν τῇ τῆς οὐσίας κοινότητι ἀσύμβατά φαμεν εἶναι
καὶ ἀκοινώνητα τὰ ἐπιθεωρούμενα τῇ Τριάδι γνωρίσματα, δι᾽ὧν ἡ ἰδιότης
παρίσταται τῶν ἐν τῇ πίστει παραδεδομένων. In this passage a clear
distinction is made between the level of ousia and the level of hypostasis,
stating that what is preached as common belongs to the former, and what
is preached as particular belongs to the latter. Be that as it may, to assert
that ‘only persons who share a single nature maintain authentic otherness,
having their being in each other without coalescence or commingling’
(The One and the Three, p. 47) is, at the intra-trinitarian level, in line with
Zizioulas. The question Zizioulas asks is: how is it that they share a single
nature?
132.
Τὸ δὲ τῆς οὐσίας ταυτὸν, ἐπειδὴ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὁ Υἱὸς (Basil of Caesarea,
Homily 24.4 [PG 31, 605B]). This passage will be taken up again. According
to Koutloumousianos, it states that the identity of the hypostaseis is
guaranteed by the common nature (cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and
the Three, p. 27). Basil, also according to the rest of the discourse, states that
the Son has identity with the Father because they both confess one essence.
However, the question of the Son’s identity with the Father, explained on
the basis of their common divinity, does not exhaust the question of the
42 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

identity of essence’.133 This point should be borne in mind, as well as the

fact that for Zizioulas this question can only be adequately answered by
the doctrine of the monarchy of the Father.

The Homoousion: Implementation of What Is Common to the

Three as Koinōnia/Koinōnia kata Physin
If Zizioulas, as we have said, is of the opinion that Nicaea used the term
homoousion to affirm that the Son is not a creature, and not to affirm, in
positive terms, something about God’s being, in the patristic reception of
homoousion, he sees a recusal of divine being as necessity. In this sense,
he refers to Gregory of Nazianzus’ defence of homoousion against the
Arian accusation that it implies the necessity of divine being.134 Zizioulas
thus shows that, for the Fathers, in the doctrine of homoousion, ousia
excluded necessity in God. It would therefore be problematic to affirm
that for Zizioulas the divine ousia, connected to that Basilian ‘being
other to the other’, coincides with necessity.135 According to Zizioulas, as
will be seen in the next chapter, Nazianzen places trinitarian reflection
on the causality of the Father in relation to the doctrine of homoousion,
as the foundational and interpretative basis of the latter.
This being so, it is agreed that homoousion was not the focus of the
Cappadocians’ reflection, mainly because this notion was open to two
misunderstandings. The first, well focused by Zizioulas,136 is the possible
Sabellian interpretation. Since ousia and hypostasis were terms that
could be understood as synonyms, saying that the Son is of the same
substance as the Father could be understood as ‘of the same hypostasis

Son’s identity with respect to the Father. This, as will be seen, is resolved on
the level of schesis.
133.
Moreover, the distinction that Koutloumousianos makes between ‘ground’,
used to illustrate the role played by ousia in relation to equality, and ‘firm
ground’, to indicate the role played by ousia in relation to otherness (ibid.,
p. 30), reveals or confirms that to apply to ousia some causal value in
relation to hypostasis is to be discarded.
134.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 162.
135.
I have already made it clear, and shall return to this question at length in the
following chapters, that for Zizioulas nature in itself, i.e. independently of
the hypostatic level, and only in that sense, can be regarded as a necessary
principle for God.
136.
Cf. ibid., pp. 156–59.
The Cappadocians 43

as the Father’.137 A second misunderstanding could lie in the fact that for
Paul of Samosata, according to Athanasius’ reconstruction,138 if the Son
was homoousios with the Father, this would mean that an ousia preceding
the Father and the Son and from which they were derived would have to
be presupposed, with the consequence that two gods would have to be
admitted.139 Zizioulas points out that, if there is a substance that precedes
the Father and the Son, this also entails the subdivision of the substance
(each hypostasis possesses a part).140 If the hypostasis possesses only a part
of the substance, then the great problem opens up, both at the trinitarian
and anthropological level, represented for Zizioulas by individualism
and therefore by the necessity of God’s being.141
Zizioulas notes in Basil a substantial reluctance to use the term
homoousion. It is difficult, however, to establish whether this reticence
was simply a fear of possible Sabellian interpretations, or rather a
conviction that a theology more focused on hypostaseis denotes a
deeper understanding of the trinitarian mystery. Zizioulas, without
excluding the first hypothesis, favours the second.142 It is difficult to

137.
Sabellius professed precisely the identity of hypostaseis. With Prestige, it
is possible to observe that Basil ‘hails homoousios [proper] as a safeguard
against Sabellianism, since a unitary object cannot be homoousios with
itself; the term implies plurality of hypostasis’ (Prestige, God in Patristic
Thought, p. 204).
138.
Cf. Athanasius, De Synodis, 45 (PG 26, 772–76).
139.
Paul of Samosata applied considerations relating to the nature of material
substances (cf. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 201–3).
140.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, pp. 106–7, citing Basil of Caesarea, Ep.
361 (PG 32, 1100–1).
141.
This can also be understood by considering the fact that, in this way, one
hypostasis temporally precedes the other and, for example, the Father
becomes a necessary given for the Son.
142.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 182. Zizioulas
talks about the rejection of homoousion by the Fathers of Constantinople
and excludes that Basil was reticent about this term for tactical reasons,
i.e. to gain orthodoxy for those who did not accept it, and demonstrates
Basilian reticence from the texts of Gregory of Nazianzus: Ep. 58 (PG 37,
113C-16B); Oratio 43.69 (PG 36, 589BC). For Claudio Moreschini, Basil
showed himself sympathetic towards those who had difficulty accepting
the homoousion, insofar as it was not accompanied by a doctrine that made
it clear that the affirmation of the division of substance, as well as of a
44 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

pronounce on Basil’s intentions, but some considerations can be made

about a hypothetical ‘personalist turn’, which is a relevant aspect for
understanding and evaluating Zizioulas’ theological proposal.
For Zizioulas, Basil’s tendency to speak of ousia in terms of koinōnia
also applies to the homoousion. In particular, for Zizioulas, the
expressions oikia kai symphyēs kai achōristos koinōnia and koinōnia
kata physin (or symphyēs koinōnia) are significant.143 Referring to
the homoousion with the expression koinōnia kata physin implies for
Zizioulas not an exclusion of the category of ousia from the trinitarian
discourse – perhaps because it is linked to necessity – but a more
personalist line of understanding, as can be seen from the Basilian
statement already mentioned: ‘for nothing is homoousion in itself
but [as] other to the other’.144 According to this reading, a relational
movement would be implicit in homoousion, the expression koinōnia
kata physin – ‘communion according to the substance’, ‘substantial
communion’ – would refer to a relational, communal, non-contingent
reality, as belonging to the level of nature.145
So far, we have seen that homoousion was initially used to express
consubstantiality, understood as ‘being other to the other’. Zizioulas
acknowledges that this term acquired with Basil the function of
indicating also the divine unity,146 although the term koinōnia was
preferred.147 Basil writes:

substance prior to that of the Father and the Son, was absolutely excluded
from the trinitarian dogma (cf. C. Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci: Storia,
letteratura, teologia (Rome: Città Nuova, 2008), p. 253; Basil of Caesarea,
Ep. 52 [PG 32, 392–96]).
143.
Cf. ‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, p. 134; ‘Pneumatology and the
Importance of the Person’, p. 184); Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto,
26.63 (PG 32, 184C); 27.68 (PG 32, 193–96); Ep. 52.3 (PG 32, 393C); Contra
Eunomium, II.12 (PG 29, 593C).
144.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 90. Οὐ γὰρ αὐτό ἐστιν ἑαυτῷ ὁμοούσιον, ἀλλ᾽ἑτερον
ἑτέρῳ (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 52.3 [PG 32, 393C]).
145.
Koutloumousianos also identifies the connection between ‘communion’
and ‘communion of nature’ (cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and the
Three, p. 45). The question is whether the former is grounded on (‘lies in’)
the latter, as he argues, or whether the latter is grounded on the former, as
Zizioulas will be seen to argue, or indeed whether there is a third possibility.
146.
This is also confirmed by Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 227–28.
147.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 184.
The Cappadocians 45

If, therefore, they say that the prosōpa are without hypostasis,
this assertion in itself is absurd: if it is admitted that the prosōpa
exist in a true hypostasis, as they acknowledge, let them also
enumerate them, so that the principle of homoousion may be
preserved in the unity of divinity.148

Basil focuses his understanding of consubstantiality and divine unity

on the derivation of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father,
since, when he talks about the ‘reason for unity’, he states that the Son
‘preserves the homoousion as progeny’ of the Father.149
On the basis of these considerations, it can be assumed that if ousia
indicates what is common to the divine persons, homoousion indicates
the hypostatic dynamic underlying it: the equal dignity and unity
of nature manifest the ‘wholeness’ of the trinitarian existence that
proceeds from the Father.150 While it is true that Zizioulas focuses on
koinōnia rather than homoousion, it is also true that the latter is not
understood by him as mere equality.151 In this sense the statement that

148.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 214.4 (PG 32, 789B); cf. Ep. 52.1 (PG 32, 392–93).
In this part of the letter, Basil is recalling the distinction between ousia,
as a term expressing the general, and hypostasis, as a term expressing the
particular, in order to affirm the hypostatic distinction and consubstantiality
in the Trinity.
149.
[Ὁ] τῆς ἑνότητος λόγος … ὡς δὲ γέννημα, τὸ ὁμοούσιον διασώζει (Basil of
Caesarea, Homily 24.4 [PG 31, 608A]). De Halleux also believes that Basil
attributes to the term homoousion the meaning of ‘consubstantial’ (insofar
as it is brought back to the hypostatic level of derivation from the Father) in
the following Basilian passage: ‘Therefore, since the Father is light without
a beginning and the Son, generated light, and each is light, [the Fathers
of Nicaea] rightly said homoousion, in order to present the equal dignity of
nature’ – Ἐπεὶ οὖν ἐστιν ἄναρχον φῶς ὁ Πατὴρ, γενντὸν δὲ φῶς ὁ Υἱὸς, φῶς
καὶ φῶς ἑκάτερος, ὁμοούσιον εἶπαν δικαίως, ἵνα τὸ τῆς φύσεως ὁμότιμον
παραστήσωσιν (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 52.2 (PG 32, 393C); cf. de Halleux,
‘Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères cappadociens?’, p. 146.
150.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203.
151.
Cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 268 (cf. N. Loudovikos,
‘Consubstantiality Beyond Perichoresis: Personal Threeness, Intra-divine
Relations and Personal Consubstantiality in Augustine’s, Thomas Aquinas’
and Maximus the Confessor’s Trinitarian Theologies’, paper presented to the
Oxford Patristic Conference, 2015, at: https://www.academia.edu/20373964
/_Consubstantiality_Beyond_Perichoresis_Personal_Threeness_Intra-Divine
46 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

‘substantialist language in theology was being gradually replaced by

that of the person’152 should be well understood. If it is meant to affirm
that a more personalist, but not anti-essentialist perspective is taking
hold, as the analysis of the patristic reading of Zizioulas conducted so
far shows, this conjecture can be considered admissible.153
After focusing on the patristic reading provided by Zizioulas
concerning the notions of ousia and homoousion, we can move on to
the study of the notion of hypostasis. I shall start with some general
considerations on the philosophical matrix of hypostasis, then shift
attention to the meaning that, according to Zizioulas, the Cappadocians
attributed to this term (tropos hyparxeōs as tropos scheseōs and
particular being) up to the question of its identification with prosōpon
and especially of its possible ontological primacy over ousia.

Hypostasis as That Which Indicates the Individual Property,

the Complex of Properties, and That Which Distinguishes and
Defines What Is Common and What Is Particular
If we look at what the Cappadocians meant by hypostasis, we see that
it is not so unambiguous. The Cappadocians’ elaboration of the notion
of hypostasis is long and complex. Indeed, a survey of Zizioulas’
presentation of this term in the context of their teaching reveals this
complexity. We present below the various connotations of the term
hypostasis found by Zizioulas in their writings.
Hypostasis as that which indicates individual property: Zizioulas
argues that the Cappadocians, having to clarify the terms hypostasis and
ousia, proposed to understand the latter as a category expressing what is
general. Basil’s Letter 38 refers to hypostasis as the ‘complex of individual
properties’154 or ‘distinctive’ properties,155 which, as Zizioulas explains,

_Relations_and_Personal_Consubstantiality_in_Augustines_Thomas
_Aquinas_and_Maximus_the_Confessors_Trinitarian_Theologies?email
_work_cardinteraction_paper (accessed 21 November 2019). It will be seen in
Part Two, on Zizioulas’ theological development, how for these, nature, if not
actually causing otherness, is involved in the definition of otherness.
152.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 182.
153.
Zizioulas’ assertion that his notion of person is elaborated not without
reference to the divine essence will be explained below (cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ
Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 17).
154.
‘If indeed we hold that hypostasis is the concurrence of individual
properties’ – Εἰ γὰρ ὑπόστασιν ἀποδεδώκαμεν εἶναι τὴν συνδρομὴν τῶν
περὶ ἕκαστον ἰδιομάτων (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.6 (PG 32, 336C)].
155.
γνωριστικὰς ἰδιότητας (ibid.).
The Cappadocians 47

are ‘hypostatic properties that define the particularity or otherness of each

person in God, as the only ones that can be said to constitute the Person in
God’.156 He further adds that, in the case of the divine hypostaseis, there is
only one hypostatic property attached to each of them. For the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit, they are respectively: ingenerateness (ἀγεννεσία)/
paternity (πατρότης); generation (γέννησις)/filiality (υἱότης); procession
(ἔκπεμφις, ἐκπόρευσις)/sanctification (ἁγιαστική, δύναμις, ἁγιασμός).157
Zizioulas firmly emphasises two important aspects. The first is
that hypostasis is defined by virtue of the hypostatic property, which
in turn indicates only and exclusively the relation of origin; the second
is that these hypostatic properties do not coincide totally with the
hypostaseis,158 since the latter, as Gregory of Nazianzus states, reveal the
hypostatic properties of the Three, and these are referred to the relation
of origin.159 If the hypostatic property is what identifies the hypostasis,
it follows that the hypostaseis, in the one ousia, differ from each other
precisely in their hypostatic properties, as Letter 38 attests in affirming
that ‘the individual distinctive properties shine on each [hypostasis] in
the common substance’.160
Hypostasis as ousia with properties/complexity of properties: Zizioulas
argues that the Fathers do not define divine hypostasis as ousia with
properties/complex of properties.161 The difference between hypostatic
properties and natural properties has already been noted. The former

156.
«Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 23.
157.
I shall address below the question of the fact that only in the case of the Father
do the two terms not seem equivalent and of the fact that for Nazianzen the
hypostatic property of the Father is not ‘paternity’ but ‘being Father’ (cf.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.38 [PG 35, 445B]), an aspect on which
Zizioulas does not dwell, and which instead reveals, as Moreschini points
out, that ‘Gregory tends to emphasize more than Basil the personal aspect
of the divine hypostases (and it is interesting that this passage is prior to the
Contra Eunomium)’ (Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 263; my emphasis).
158.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203.
159.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 21.35 (PG 35, 1124D).
160.
[Ἐ]ν τῇ κοινότητι τῆς οὐσίας τὰς γνωριστικὰς ἰδιότητας ἐπιλάμπειν
ἑκάστῳ (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.5 [PG 32, 336B]).
161.
According to Zizioulas, Damascene’s definition of hypostasis as φύσις μετὰ
ἰδιωμάτων departs from the Cappadocian and Maximian understanding
(cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 89). Damascene writes: ‘In fact, the hypostasis,
or what is indivisible of nature, is nature, and not only nature, but with
properties’ – Ἡ μὲν γὰρ ὑπόστασις, ἤτοι τὸ ἄτομον τῆς φύσεως, φύσις,
ἀλλ᾽οὐ μόνον φύσις, ἀλλὰ μετὰ ἰδιώματος (John Damascene, Contra
48 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

indicate what is particular, and thus are only one for each divine
hypostasis, the latter are multiple, indicating what is common to the
hypostasis, and are to be understood not apart from the hypostasis, but
in reference to it – the Son belongs to the divine substance – and thus
to the relation. According to Zizioulas, the Fathers therefore speak of
hypostasis as ousia with properties/complex of properties in reference to
the human being and classical Greek philosophy’s understanding of the
human being.162 It is worth asking whether this is admissible.
It has been said that in Letter 38 hypostasis can be understood as ‘the
complex of individual properties’.163 First, the reference is to individual
properties, and not to natural, common properties. Second, the plural
used for the expression ‘individual properties’ refers to the case of
human beings; in the case of the divine hypostaseis, as Basil asserted,
these properties are one for each hypostasis and can be traced only to the
relationship of origin.164 If we must always bear in mind, as both Zizioulas
and Loudovikos point out, that for the Fathers it is impossible to have
a hypostasis without ousia and therefore without natural qualities,165 at
the same time, as we have seen in Nyssen, and as I shall discuss below
in the section ‘Ontological Primacy of Hypostasis over Ousia’, these
natural qualities acquire existence, and therefore ontological content,
only in the hypostasis, insofar as they are hypostasised. Therefore, in
my opinion, if speaking of hypostasis as a ‘complex of qualities’ is not
wrong, unlike Zizioulas who categorically excludes such a definition,
it may simply be misleading, especially if in reference to the divine
hypostasis.166

Iacobitas, 52 [PG 94, 1461A]; cf. Dialectica, 30 [PG 94, 596A]). We shall see
below how Maximus the Confessor contradicts such a conception.
162.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 89.
163.
Εἰ γὰρ ὑπόστασιν ἀποδεδώκαμεν εἶναι τὴν συνδρομὴν τῶν περὶ ἕκαστον
ἰδιωμάτων (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.6 [PG 32, 336C]); γνωριστικὰς
ἰδιότητας (ibid. [PG 32, 336B]).
164.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 236 (PG 32, 876–85); 38 (PG 32, 325–40);
Loudovikos refers to these passages as attesting to the definition of
hypostasis as ‘nature with property’ without specifying what kind of
property it is (cf. N. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?, p. 263).
165.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 90; Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’,
p. 262. Zizioulas refers to Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola Theologica
et Polemica ad Marinum, 14 (PG 91, 264A).
166.
To understand this issue, it is helpful to consider the case of a cloned
being. The latter and the being from which it has been cloned have the
The Cappadocians 49

Hypostasis as the coincidence of otherness and communion or hypostatic

and ecstatic:167 Zizioulas promotes the understanding of the notion of
hypostasis as that reality which, as a particular hypostasisation of ousia,
has as its proprium that of expressing what is particular but at the same
time also what is general (communion, the relational character of nature)
which as such pertains per se to the level of ousia. This concept can indeed
be found in Letter 38, where Basil speaks of hypostasis as a notion that
distinguishes and defines what is common and what is particular:

But he who says ‘Paul’ shows, in the entity that is indicated

by the name, the individual subsistent nature. This then is
hypostasis: not the indefinite notion of substance, which
finds no stability because of the generality of the common
meaning; but the notion that distinguishes and defines what
is common and indefinite in any entity, highlighting the
individual characteristics.168

According to the Basil’s letter, ‘the individual subsistent nature’ is

found in the entity indicated by the name ‘Paul’, that is, in hypostasis.
The latter, as distinct from ousia – ‘the concept of commonality refers to
ousia, while hypostasis is the identifying sign of each of the three’169 – is
the notion that makes known at the same time both what pertains to
itself, i.e. the particular properties, and what pertains to ousia, i.e. the
natural, common properties, the commonality. That hypostasis expresses
not only what is particular, but also what is common, is possible because
this for Zizioulas is the unique hypostasisation of ousia. Keep this point
in mind, for it will be taken up again below in the section ‘Ontological
Primacy of Hypostasis over Ousia’.

Hypostasis as Tropos Hyparxeōs of Ousia

Zizioulas’ fundamental thesis is that it was the Cappadocians, beginning
with Basil, who identified hypostasis with tropos hyparxeōs, that is,
the mode of existence, in the sense of a relational mode, arising from

same, identical, natural properties, but are not the same. What founds the
particularity of a being is therefore not its natural properties but, as will be
seen in chapter four below, its constitutive relation with the cause.
167.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 112.
168.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.3 (PG 32, 328B).
169.
[Ὁ] μὲν τῆς κοινότητος λόγος εἰς τὴν οὐσίαν ἀνάγεται, ἡ δὲ ὑπόστασις τὸ
ἰδιάζον ἑκάστου σημεῖόν ἐστιν (ibid., 5 [PG 32, 336C]).
50 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

relations of origin,170 although this identification was expressed in a

‘categorical’ way only with Maximus the Confessor. This is a remarkable
thesis, since it represents an important opening to the understanding of
the notion of ‘person’ as a relational category.
Several times Zizioulas takes up Basil’s well-known polemic with
Eunomius, concerning the claim that the terms ‘ingenerateness’ and
‘generation’ were properties that concerned not ousia but ‘the mode
of existence’171 or ‘the mode of hypostasis’.172 On this basis the mode of
hypostasis, or of existence, is characterised by a property of hypostasis, and
not that a hypostasis is a tropos hyparxeōs. Indeed, for Zizioulas, hypostasis
is, and must remain, not strictly identified with its property.173 However,
it is true that hypostasis too, as seen in Letter 38, is the ‘individualizing
sign of each existence’,174 just as tropos hyparxeōs is the sign that identifies
each of the Three in the Trinity, as Zizioulas comments with reference to
Nyssen:

But when we speak of the cause and of that which is derived

from the cause, we do not mean, with these words, to indicate
nature (for the same explanation could not be given for nature
and cause), but we manifest a difference in that which pertains
to the mode of being.175

The particularity of each of the Three is therefore connected to the

mode of existence, which is a mode of hypostatic derivation, in that it
refers to the cause (the Father) and the caused (the Son and the Holy

170.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 23–24.
171.
[T]ρόπου τῆς ὑπάρξεως (Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 18.46 [PG
32, 152B]).
172.
[T]ρόπον τῆς ὑποστάσεως (Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, I.15
[PG 29, 548A]).
173.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203.
174.
Εἰ γὰρ ἡ ὑπόστασις τὸ ἰδιάζον τῆς ἑκάστου ὑπάρξεως σημεῖόν ἐστι (Basil
of Caesarea, Ep. 38.5 [PG 32, 336C]).
175.
Αἴτιον δὲ καὶ ἐξ αἰτίου λέγοντες οὐχὶ φύσιν διὰ τούτων τῶν ὀνομάτων
σημαίνομεν (οὐδὲ γὰρ τὸν αὐτὸν ἄν τις αἰτίας καὶ φύσεως ἀποδοίη λόγον),
ἀλλὰ τὴν κατὰ τὸ πῶς εἶναι διαφορὰν ἐνδεικνύμεθα (Gregory of Nyssa,
Ad Ablabium, 21–22 [PG 45, 133BC]). Nyssen integrates the pōs einai in the
treatment of schesis at the intra-trinitarian level (cf. G. Maspero, ‘Unità e
relazione: la schesis nella dottrina trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa’, Path 11,
no. 2 [2012], pp. 301–26, at p. 316).
The Cappadocians 51

Spirit). However, if in fact the tropos hyparxeōs seems to be referable

both to the idiōma (the characteristic property) and to the hypostasis,176
one fi nds in St John Damascene the explicit identification of the
tropos hyparxeōs with the hypostasis, when he speaks, with regard to
the Trinity, of the ‘perfection of the hypostasis, that is, of the tropos
hyparxeōs’.177
Having said this, we now observe how the tropos hyparxeōs designates
a relational existence. Zizioulas in fact explains that, in relation to
the distinction in God of three hypostaseis, the respective modes of
existence are in turn referred to as paternity, sonship and procession
and are therefore characterised by the fact that they include relations of
ontological constitution between the Three.178 The identification between
mode of existence and relational existence will in time be formally
expressed by the Fathers. Zizioulas quotes Amphilochius of Iconium,
whose theological perspective was profoundly influenced by Basil, when
he speaks clearly of ‘mode of existence, or relationship’.179 The relations
are then specified as relations of origin when he specifies that in the
hypostatic properties – generation, sonship, procession – there is implied
a causality, an order, a taxis.180
Finally, note that the tropos hyparxeōs of hypostasis, identified by
Zizioulas in fact with hypostasis, is also specified by him as the tropos
hyparxeōs of ousia.181 This juxtaposition is the result of theological and
logical deduction on the part of Zizioulas based on the close relationship
that the Cappadocians affirmed between hypostasis and ousia. Hypostasis
is understood as the presentation of the one and indivisible divine ousia,
determined by the particularising hypostatic characteristic. In this
regard, note the example offered in Letter 38 to explain this issue. In
the rainbow the splendour of the light is unique, but it is reflected by the
distinct colours, which cannot be separated from each other. Therefore,
‘in the example [of the rainbow], there is only one substance that
reflects that multicoloured light, the one that is reflected by the ray of

176.
It must be acknowledged that the use of the terms is not always totally
unambiguous.
177.
[T]ὸ τέλειον τῆς ὑποστάσεως ἤτοι τὸν τῆς ὑπάρξεως τρόπον (John
Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, I.8 [PG 94, 828D]).
178.
Cf. ‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, p. 173.
179.
[T]ρόπου ὑπάρξεως ἤτουν σχέσεως (Amphilochius of Iconium, Sententiae
et Excerpta, 15 [PG 39, 112D]; Communion and Otherness, p. 175).
180.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203.
181.
‘Mode of nature’s existence’ (‘Person and Nature’, p. 102).
52 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the sun, but the splendour of what appears has many aspects’.182 Hence
the conclusion that, just as colours are the reflection of the splendour
of light, the individual properties of the hypostaseis – as well as the
hypostaseis – are the presentation of the one substance.183 Ultimately,
if the juxtaposition of hypostasis with the tropos hyparxeōs is well-
founded, it is admissible on the basis of what has been said to maintain
that the tropos hyparxeōs of hypostasis, coinciding with hypostasis itself,
is the tropos hyparxeōs of ousia.

Hypostasis as a Particular Being

Zizioulas affirms that the Cappadocians, in order to avoid any Sabellian
interpretation of the Trinity, strongly emphasised the ‘the fulness and
ontological integrity’184 of each hypostasis. In this way he upholds the
absolute hypostatic distinction of the Three, free from any form of
subordinationism. It is worth asking how Zizioulas derives this from the
Cappadocians. We have seen how Zizioulas emphasised the fact that the
term hypostasis indicates what is peculiar to a being, which in turn refers
to a relational mode of existence. In this sense, hypostasis is a subsistence
characterised by a mode of existence that is relational.
Zizioulas shows how, on this basis, the Cappadocians identified the
hypostasis with the idion (what is specific to the individual),185 and thus
with the particular being, with that which is indicated by a proper

182.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.5 (PG 32, 336B). We have seen how, in ibid., 3 (PG
32, 328B), it has been affirmed that hypostasis presents, with its particular
characters, that which, in a given being, is common with other beings.
183.
Cf. ibid. (PG 32, 336B).
184.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 157; Basil
of Caesarea, Ep. 236.6 (PG 32, 884). Ioannis Panagopoulos objected to
Zizioulas that the Fathers identified prosōpon with hypostasis precisely in
order to distinguish the latter from ousia, and not to acquire ontological
content (cf. Panagopoulos, «Ὀντολογία ἤ θεολογία τοῦ προσώπου: Ἡ
συμβολή τῆς πατερικῆς Τριαδολογίας στήν κατανόηση τοῦ ἀνθροπίνου
προσώπου», Synaxē 13 [1985], pp. 63–79, at pp. 70–76; 14 [1985], pp. 35–47).
Zizioulas responded (cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 23)
by recalling the Cappadocian distinction between the fact, apprehended from
the energies, that God exists, what God is, i.e. essence, and as God exists, i.e.
tropos hyparxeōs/hypostasis, concluding that, for the Cappadocians, energies,
essence and hypostasis are ontological categories, and that this analysis was
accepted by the Confessor and by Gregory Palamas (citing his Capita Physica,
Theologica, Moralia et Practica 75 [PG 150, 1173B]).
185.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 67.
The Cappadocians 53

name, as is the case of a human hypostasis with the name ‘Paul’. In this
sense the name indicates that particular man (ἄνθρωπος) and not man
generically.186 Even with reference to the Trinity, Basil expresses himself
by connecting the notion of hypostasis with that of Father, Son and Holy
Spirit, respectively, when he says: ‘we confess a particular hypostasis
so that our conception of Father, Son and Holy Spirit may be without
confusion and clear’.187 However, even in this case, it is Maximus the
Confessor in the wake of the Cappadocians who arrives at the formally
explicit statements: ‘Hypostasis is, according to the philosophers, ousia
with idiōmata. But according to the Fathers, hypostasis is the particular
man as distinct (ἀφοριζόμενος) personally (προσωπικῶς) from other
men’.188 Finally we have the testimony of John Damascene, who states
that: ‘the Son is a perfect hypostasis’.189

Hypostasis as a Relational Being

On the basis of the understanding of hypostasis as tropos hyparxeōs of
ousia and as a subsistent particular being, it is possible to understand
the importance for Zizioulas of the Cappadocians’ statements about
hypostasis as a notion indicating a relation, schesis. He considers these
statements fundamental proofs of patristic ‘relational ontology’.
First of all, Zizioulas does not devote particular attention to the study
of the notion of schesis at the patristic level.190 What he has observed at

186.
In the latter case, man indicates common nature (cf. Basil of Caesarea,
Ep. 38.3 [PG 32, 328AB]). That concrete human beings are designated by
the term hypostasis is also stated, for example, in Basil of Caesarea, Ep.
236.6 (PG 32, 884A); cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 158.
187.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 236.6 (PG 32, 884A).
188.
Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum,
16 (PG 91, 276B); cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 89.
189.
John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, I.8 (PG 94, 821A). Note, finally,
what Prestige observes, namely that hypostasis progressively comes to
acquire the meaning of ‘positive and concrete and distinct existence, first
of all in the abstract, and later … in the particular individual’ (Prestige,
God in Patristic Thought, p. 174).
190.
Zizioulas leaves aside the question of the philosophical derivation,
Aristotelian or Stoic or other, of the term schesis, as well as, for the most
part, the study of its patristic meaning, though he touches on this in one
of his later writings, ‘Relational Ontology’, in Polkinghorne (ed.), The
Trinity and an Entangled World. The case of Yannaras is different (cf. for
example, Relational Ontology (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
2011). On this matter, Maspero’s thesis is worth noting: the Aristotelian
54 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

a general level is this: hypostasis is not a schesis,191 but includes relations

of ontological constitution.192 The Cappadocian conception of relation
as an ontological notion is, according to Zizioulas, quite different from
that of Augustine.193 For the latter, the Three are neither a substance nor
an accident, but relations that have real subsistence, which Zizioulas
believes is due to the teaching of Plotinus and Porphyry.194 Augustine,
unlike Aristotle, as Zizioulas observes, elevates relation to an ontological
category but makes relation and person subsistent in the divine substance,
which thus continues to have ontological priority, as in the various forms
of Greek philosophy.195 The Cappadocians, on the other hand, attributed
ontological content to relation without identifying hypostasis with it,196
and so substance lost the status of ontological priority that classical
Greek thought had attributed to it.
Having clarified that hypostasis is not a schesis, Zizioulas focuses on
the assumption that hypostasis indicates a schesis. He repeatedly recalls
Nazianzen’s words that ‘the name Father does not indicate a substance …

πρòς τί πως ἔχειν (an expression used to indicate relation), revised then by
the Stoics and subjected to Neoplatonic criticism, is substantially modified
and translated into the πῶς εἶναι. Once inserted into the divine substance,
the σχέσις can no longer be interpreted in terms of having, but must be
translated in terms of being (cf. G. Maspero, ‘Unità e relazione’, p. 323).
191.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 137. Zizioulas cites C.E. Gunton, The Promise
of Trinitarian Theology (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1991) in support of his
thesis.
192.
Cf. ‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 239.
193.
Cf. ‘Relational Ontology’, in Polkinghorne (ed.), The Trinity and an
Entangled World, pp. 147–48.
194.
Cf. ibid., p. 147; Plotinus, Enneads, VI.1.6–8.
195.
Zizioulas mentions, for example, Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, 5–7
(PL 42, 911–46).
196.
Maspero observes in this regard that Gregory of Nyssa changes the
ontological status of the relation and inserts it into the substance so that in
the trinitarian ontology of Nyssen the resemantisation concerns both the
relation and the substance, inasmuch as the latter ‘opens up’, disclosing to
the relation itself its immanence. Cf. G. Maspero, ‘L’ontologia trinitaria
di Gregorio di Nissa e Agostino d’Ippona’, in P. Coda, A. Clemenzia
and J. Tremblay (eds), Un pensiero per abitare la frontiera: Sulle tracce
dell’ontologia trinitaria di Klaus Hemmerle (Rome: Città Nuova, 2016),
pp. 65–78, at pp. 76–77.
The Cappadocians 55

or an energy, but a schesis’.197 Not only does the particular being indicate
a relation, but also it is distinguished from another particular being
only by virtue of this relation, specified as a relation of origin.198 This is
clear for Zizioulas, for example, from Gregory of Nyssa’s words: ‘“the
only distinction between the other and the other” of divine persons is

197.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A) – ‘The Father is a
name neither of substance nor of energy but of schesis’ (Communion and
Otherness, p. 161).
198.
We have seen above (in section titled, ‘Hypostasis as That Which Indicates
the Individual Property, …’) how the hypostatic properties of the Father,
the Son and the Holy Spirit are respectively: ingenerateness (ἀγεννεσία)/
paternity (πατρότης), generation (γέννησις)/filiality (υἱότης) and procession
(ἔκπεμψις, ἐκπόρευσις)/sanctification (ἁγιαστική, δύναμις, ἁγιασμός). At
this point, Jean-Claude Larchet, in countering Zizioulas’ thesis, observes it
should also be noted that the Father cannot be defined solely by his relation
to the Son, but also by the one with the Holy Spirit (cf. J.-C. Larchet,
Personne et nature: La Trinité, Le Christ, L’homme [Paris: Cerf, 2011], p. 303).
Zizioulas has grasped this issue when he observes that the Son and the Holy
Spirit both call the first divine person ‘Father’ (cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς
τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 101). How then
the term ‘Father’ defines the relationship with the Holy Spirit is another
question, towards which the Fathers themselves maintained an apophatic
attitude. (Zizioulas will offer some elements that will be identified and
discussed in chapter four). In this case, apophaticism does not concern
only, or even primarily, a negative theology, as Larchet believes, when, in
support of his thesis, he cites the passage from Nazianzen’s Oratio 31.9 in
which he states that from the divine names it is inferred that one person
is not the other (cf. Larchet, Personne et nature, p. 303). The meaning of
the name ‘Father’ does not lie, negatively, only in the fact that the Father
is not the Son, but also, more positively, in the fact that the name ‘Father’
indicates the schesis with the Son. Moreover, for Zizioulas, the doctrine
developed by Nyssen of the intra-trinitarian procession of the Holy Spirit
from the Father through the Son, reveals – without further detail – that the
latter is to be conceived in relation to the Father and the Son. In this sense,
Larchet’s observation, according to which the person indicates not only the
relation of origin but also the perichōrēsis as interpenetration that takes
place by means of nature and energies (cf. ibid., p. 305), is admissible if one
recognises the primacy of the relation: ‘the name ‘Father’ does not indicate
a substance … nor an energy, but a relation’ (Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 29.16 [PG 36, 96A]).
56 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

that of “cause and being caused”’.199 From this Zizioulas deduces that, if
hypostasis is the ousia determined by the particularising property arising
from the relations of origin, the natural qualities, present in hypostasis
and characterising hypostasis, do not represent the primary constitutive
of hypostasis, making it impossible to speak of hypostasis as an ‘agreement
of qualities’.200 Furthermore, on this basis Zizioulas explains the tendency
of the Greek Fathers to avoid giving any positive content to the divine
hypostaseis; they limit themselves to saying that the Father is simply
not the Son, or that the Son is not the Father,201 or in a positive sense,
that the Father is understood solely in the light of the term Son.202 This
apophaticism of the Fathers expresses a certain kataphasis, proper to a
precise conception of hypostasis as a unique alterity and nothing else that
possesses common properties which are what they are because of their
particular mode of hypostasisation. Zizioulas writes:

we cannot give a positive qualitative content to a hypostasis or

person, for this would result in the loss of his or her absolute
uniqueness and turn a person into a classifiable entity …
the Father, the Son and the Spirit are not identifiable except
simply through being who they are.203

The Cappadocian notion of hypostasis is more appropriately understood

with reference to the notion of schesis, a notion introduced into ontology
by Basil,204 which leads Zizioulas to assert that hypostasis is ‘a mode of
“being” comprising relations (σχέσις) of ontological constitutiveness’.205
In this regard, he quotes the words of Gregory of Nyssa:

199.
‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, p. 172; cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad
Ablabium, 21 (PG 45, 133B).
200.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 173.
201.
Cf. ibid., p. 111.
202.
Cf. ibid., p. 126; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A).
203.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 112. The juxtaposition
of hypostasis and person will be discussed soon.
204.
This is an established point (cf. L.F. Ladaria, La Trinidad, misterio de
comunion [Salamanca: Secretariado Trinitario, 2002], p. 70).
205.
‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, p. 173; Zizioulas mentions
Amphilochius of Iconium, Sententiae et Excerpta, 15 (PG 39, 112D);
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A).
The Cappadocians 57

For what mutual relation is so closely and concordantly

engrafted and fitted together as that meaning of relation to
the Father expressed by the word ‘Son’? And a proof of this is
that even if both of these names be not spoken, that which is
omitted is connoted by the one that is uttered, so closely is the
one implied in the other and concordant with it; and both of
them are so discerned in the one that one cannot be conceived
without the other.206

The reciprocal nature of these relations of origin is highlighted: they

are mutual relations, which Zizioulas further clarifies by citing John
Damascene:

In their mutual relations (ἐν ἀλλήλαις) the hypostases exist

not so they might be confused, but as they carry each other
or relate to each other (ἔχεσθαι) … not composed (or added
together: συντιθεμένων). … For they are united in a way not
of confusion but of mutual relation (ἔχεσθαι ἀλλήλων); and
they have their perichoresis in each other without coalescing
(συναλοιφήν) or admixture (σύμφυρσιν).207

Zizioulas recalls other patristic passages in which reference is made to

the reciprocal relation, without, however, elaborating on the meaning of
this notion.208 In any case, it emerges how Zizioulas grasps the fact that

206.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 122; Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium,
IV.8 (PG 45, 669C)]. Maspero sheds more light on the connection between
substance and relation in Nyssen: ‘the only way for the Father, the Son and
the Spirit to be truly connected is if they are in a natural relationship, that
is, if they are identified with a single eternal and immutable substance, in
which the distinction is made only by the relationship itself’ (Maspero,
‘Unità e relazione’, p. 320). Hence, the conclusion: ‘To be of the same nature
means to be united by means of a relation which does not distinguish the
terms by nature but rather identifies them with nature itself’ (ibid., p. 322).
207.
‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, p. 174; John Damascene, De Fide
Orthodoxa, I.8 (PG 94, 829A).
208.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 131–32, in which he cites a passage of Basil
of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, II.22 (PG 29, 619A-21B) in which it is
said that the names of Father and Son, understood in themselves, indicate
the only mutual relation (πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσιν). The attention to the
relation, as reciprocal, and in reference to the identity of nature, was placed
58 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the relation of origin, in the light of which the meaning of hypostasis is

understood, consists in a reciprocal relation or, in other words, initiates
a reciprocal relation, in which taxis and reciprocity are not mutually
exclusive.
Now, if hypostasis is a particular being, characterised by a tropos
hyparxeōs understood as arising from relations of origin, this means, in
Zizioulas’ view, that hypostasis was not conceivable as an atomon. The
conceptual differentiation advocated by Zizioulas between hypostasis
and atomon has attracted criticism from many quarters. He argues that
the term atomon denotes ‘a concrete, specific (ἰδικὴ) and indivisible
existence of ousia’,209 and thus does not highlight the relational character
that he finds in hypostasis. It is for this reason that the Fathers used
atomon in anthropology, but not in the trinitarian sphere. Loudovikos
argues that the term was also used in the trinitarian sphere, albeit a
few times,210 and that the rare use is due to historical reasons. In fact,
the use of the term persona – and therefore of its equivalent prosōpon,
and not atomon – as a synonym for hypostasis was widespread, due to
the lexical poverty of the Latins who could not adequately render the
distinction made by the Greek Fathers between hypostasis and ousia/
physis.211 As we shall see in the section ‘Hypostasis as Prosōpon’, this
thesis has its basis in Nazianzen, although it cannot be deduced from
this that, if the notion of person had not been imposed, the term atomon
would have been imposed instead. Rather, one must ask whether it is

especially by Nazianzen (cf. Oratio, 31.9 [PG 36, 141C]) and Nyssen (Contra
Eunomium, I.51 [PG 45, 480]).
209.
Communion and Otherness, p. 175.
210.
He gives the example of John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, I.7 (PG
94, 804–8); cf. N. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 271. Larchet
agrees on this point, Personne et nature, pp. 272f. Lucian Turcescu notes
how, for example, Nyssen, in order to refer to a person, has used in addition
to the terms ὑπόστασις, πρόσωπον and ἄτομον, and the expression ‘complex
of properties’, also the terms περιγράφουσα/περιγραφή (circumscription),
μερικὴ οὐσία (partial substance) and ἰδικὴ οὐσία (particular substance).
Cf. L. Turcescu, ‘Hypostasis (ὑπόστασις)’, in Mateo-Seco and Maspero
(eds), The Brill Dictionary of Gregory of Nyssa, pp. 403–7, at pp. 405–6. It
remains true, however, that ὑπόστασις and πρόσωπον, in addition to the
expression tropos hyparxeōs, are the most frequently used terms, especially
for the divine persons.
211.
Cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 271.
The Cappadocians 59

permissible to speak of the relationality of a particular being, especially

at the intra-trinitarian level. If this relationality – hypostasis as tropos
hyparxeōs indicating the relation of origin – is assumed to be present
in the term atomon, the latter could be used indifferently in place of
hypostasis, otherwise the claim of synonymy between hypostasis and
atomon risks being misleading. Moreover, as we have already begun
to see with Zizioulas, the relational character of hypostasis should be
considered an emergent datum – ‘mode of existence, i.e. of relation’.

Hypostasis as Prosōpon
What is the meaning of the term hypostasis in the light of its identification
with prosōpon? Zizioulas shows great interest in this aspect of the
history of dogma, which constitutes a basic element of his ontology
of the person, as is evident from the essay, «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ
πρόσωπον», which presents the fundamental intuition on which all his
subsequent reflection is based.
Zizioulas’ thesis is as follows. With the Cappadocians there was a real
revolution in ontology, because of the identification of hypostasis with
prosōpon. Hypostasis, an ontological notion indicating being, understood
as a synonym of ousia, was dissociated from the latter and referred to
prosōpon,212 the Greek equivalent of the Latin persona. Since prosōpon is
a relational concept, the Cappadocians gave ontological content, proper
to hypostasis, to a relational notion, such as that expressed by the term
prosōpon. After analysing this thesis in more detail, we will examine
with Zizioulas the meaning attributed by the Cappadocians to prosōpon,
as well as the legitimacy of this identification.
Zizioulas, first of all, analyses the semantics of the term prosōpon.
Briefly, he recalls that prosōpon initially indicated ‘the part under the
skullcap’, then ‘the face’, anatomically speaking, and later the ‘theatrical
mask’ and, from here, the role played by the actor.213 Face (prosōpon)
and mask (prosōpeion) come to coincide, and not only because the
mask refers to the face. Zizioulas proposes an explanation of the causes
of this identification. In Greek tragedy, the human story was staged,
characterised by the fact that man experiences himself as a yearning for
freedom, struggling against the necessity of kosmos, which arises from
the ontological affinity between it – and therefore man – and the gods.

212.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 157–58.
213.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 78.
60 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Man sees the failure of his attempt to affirm his freedom, discovering
that his prosōpon, in the sense of his being a ‘person’, as an aspiration
for freedom, as self-determination, was only a prosōpeion, a mask, that
is, an element added to his being, and not his being. What characterises
man, and what makes him a prosōpon, is freedom, but such a prosōpon,
in the sense of a free man, is a prosōpeion: he and his freedom have no
ontological content.214
In the Roman world, as Zizioulas continues, we have a similar
situation. Persona, the term that translates prosōpon, indicates the
theatrical role, but also and above all the role of man in social life, the
‘legal’ and ‘moral’ person.215 Here, too, the persona is characterised by
the fact that it must struggle against necessity, which, in the view of
Roman legal thought, does not spring from the harmony of kosmos but
from the state.216
According to Zizioulas, the terms prosōpon and persona express a notion
that refers to man, but also to the gods, and indicates the affirmation of
freedom against necessity, a freedom that is however devoid of ontological
content.
For Zizioulas, the Fathers thus offer to the history of thought the concept
of ‘person’ as an ontological category, starting from trinitarian reflection
and through the identification between prosōpon and hypostasis.217 This

214.
Cf. ibid., pp. 79–80.
215.
According to Milano, the term prosōpon is used more with the meaning of
face, persona more with that of individual (cf. Milano, Persona in teologia,
p. 68).
216.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 80–81. In the English translation of this essay, published as
‘Personhood and Being’ in Being as Communion, Zizioulas adds a note in
which, referring to the study of M. Nédoncelle, ‘Prosopon et persona dans
l’antiquité classique’, Revue des sciences religieuses 22 (1948), pp. 277–99, he
points out the possibility of the origin of the Latin term persona from the
Etruscan phersu, connected with a ritual or theatrical mask, and, perhaps,
with the Greek mythological figure Persephone (cf. Being as Communion,
p. 33; this study is mentioned again in Communion and Otherness, p. 185).
In this case, even in the Roman world, the concept of person, developed
more in a juridical sense than in the Greek world, would be connected to
the theatre, to the role of the actor and, ultimately, aimed at representing
the human story.
217.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 83. Vlachos also shows how the reflection on prosōpon, although
The Cappadocians 61

identification is certainly widely attested in the patristic writings, and is

sometimes formally affirmed – ‘We recognize the One in ousia and in
the inseparability of adoration, the Three we confess in hypostaseis or
prosopa.’218 Sometimes it is taken for granted, as will be seen in Basil who,
although he prefers the term hypostasis to prosōpon, sometimes employs
the latter in the same sense as the former, as when he writes that ‘according
to the property of prosōpa, they [the Father and the Son] are one and one,
for by their common nature the one and the other are one’.219
If in the trinitarian sphere the use of persona/prosōpon had already
taken place with Tertullian and Hippolytus, and the replacement of
hypostasis with prosōpon took place with Origen and his doctrine, at
times subordinationist, of the three hypostaseis, it was the Cappadocians,
according to Zizioulas, who made this identification a real revolution
in ontology.220 In Tertullian the term ‘person’ has no ontological
meaning, and scholars agree on this,221 unlike, according to Zizioulas,

this term was taken from common language, was conducted from the
trinitarian sphere and in relation to its identification with hypostasis. The
meaning of prosōpon is elaborated by the Fathers, first of all, in reference
to God and then understood in reference to man, since it is man who is
created according to the image of God, and not vice versa: ‘In the Orthodox
East the elaboration of prosōpon arises out of theology, that is, from the
attempt of the Fathers to determine the relation of the Persons of the Holy
Trinity’ (Vlachos, Το πρόσωπο στην ορθόδοξη παράδοση [Lebadeia, 1994],
pp. 138–39).
218.
[T]ὸ μὲν ἕν τῇ οὐσία γινώσκοντες, καὶ τῷ ἀμερίστῳ τῆς προσκυνήσεως,
τὰ δὲ τρία, ταῖς ὑποστάσεσιν, εἴτουν προσώποις (Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 42.16 (PG 36, 477A)].
219.
Ὥστε κατὰ μὲν τὴν ἰδιότητα τῶν προσώπων εἷς καὶ εἷς, κατὰ δὲ τὸ κοινὸν
τῆς φύσεως ἕν οἱ ἀμφότεροι (Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 18.45
[PG 32, 149C]).
220.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 50.
221.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 84. Milano shows how Tertullian employs persona to express
the realism of the three divine figures (cf. Milano, Persona in teologia,
pp. 67–68). In doing so, Tertullian does not resort to the term persona,
because he reads prosōpon in the Septuagint, to which he goes 850 times to
translate the Hebrew panim, face. He does not even take the term ‘person’
from the juridical (individual) or philosophical sphere (in the case of
Stoicism, for which prosōpon is ens concretum through the idiotētes, which
also constitute the eidos), but from common language (legitimised by the
62 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the Cappadocians. Is this really the case? And how did they arrive at
this assumption? According to Zizioulas, the identification between
prosōpon and hypostasis was intended to safeguard both monotheism,
against a possible use of hypostasis in the neoplatonic manner, which
would lead creation and God back to the sphere of ontological necessity,
and the full and real otherness of the world and the Three, against a
use of prosōpon in the Sabellian manner.222 With this identification, for
Zizioulas, the prosōpon – referring to freedom, understood as creativity
outside of necessity – is no longer, as we have said, an element added to
being, but the very hypostasis of a being, the constitutive of that being.
For him, prosōpon, according to the fundamental meanings attributed
by the Cappadocians to hypostasis, meant both the being itself and
the constitutive of its being.223 Moreover, the attribution of freedom to
prosōpon is understood in relation to its relational character: a concrete
individual, a particular being, human or divine, is, and therefore is free,
insofar as it is related to another.224
From the theological point of view, in Zizioulas such a conception
of prosōpon is expressed both by the doctrine of creatio ex nihilo –
already prepared by Athanasius, not without the previous contribution

testimony of Holy Scripture and its so-called ‘prosopographical exegesis’).

It is true that this term also acquires philosophical resonance (cf. ibid.,
p. 78). In Tertullian’s trinitarian formula – the single substantia is presented
in tres personae – persona indicates the particular individual (cf. ibid.,
p. 83), that is ‘the concrete presentation of an individual’ (Prestige, God in
Patristic Thought, p. 159), but according to a meaning linked to oikonomia.
Tertullian does not make explicit that the individual is in itself subsistent
(cf. Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 84): on the ontological level the terms
‘species’, forma, gradus are used (cf. ibid., p. 85). Therefore, Tertullian ‘has
left the person still in a state of speculative weakness, basically more or
less where he was: at the level not of being, but of the perception of being’
(ibid., p. 86; cf. J. Moingt, Théologie trinitaire de Tertullien [Paris: Aubier,
1966], vol. 2, p. 627). The person therefore does not indicate the divine
substance, as the subsistence of the latter in a particular being, so much so
that the person of the Son is conceived as the substance generated by that of
the Father, portio totius and minoratus (cf. Milano, Persona in theologia,
p. 86). The distinction of the Three as personae remains for Tertullian only
a function of the discourse on creation (cf. ibid., p. 87).
222.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 85.
223.
Cf. ibid., p. 87.
224.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, pp. 185–86.
The Cappadocians 63

of the Eucharistic theology of Ignatius and Irenaeus,225 which breaks the

ontological monism of classical Greek thought – and by the doctrine
of the ontological monarchy of the Father, as it is found by him in the
Cappadocians. From this Zizioulas derives the assumption that being
is referred to the person as freedom, i.e. as creativity not marked by
necessity, and that in the final analysis, as will be seen in the following
chapters, it is primarily that of the Father.226 Therefore, prosōpon/person
represents an ontological category – hypo-stasis (‘standing under’,
‘supporting’) – precisely insofar as it indicates a particular being and
not, in the Sabellian mode, an ‘aspect’ or a ‘façade’ of a being.227 Finally,
linked to the assumption of the ontological nature of prosōpon/persona
is the assertion that God’s substance can indicate divine being, insofar
as it possesses the three modes of existence corresponding to the
hypostatic properties of each divine hypostasis and flowing from that
of the Father.228
Having presented Zizioulas’ reading, I shall now try to evaluate
it. Given that the term prosōpon is purely a term used in everyday
language, the most common meanings are indeed those of ‘face’,
‘mask’, ‘role’, ‘individual’ and ‘legal person’. As we have already
mentioned, this term is also used extensively in Sacred Scripture, both
in the Old and New Testaments, in the sense of ‘face’, ‘appearance’,
‘individual’. The Fathers use this term, giving it a precise meaning,
starting with the trinitarian disputes, which is never that of a mask.
In the trinitarian sphere, prosōpon is used little until the middle of
the third century, until the rise of Arianism. Athanasius tries to avoid
prosōpon and hypostasis, preferring to speak of the ‘three’, 229 without,
however, prosōpon falling into disrepute in theology.230 Prosōpon is a

225.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 72. As already noted,
Zizioulas associates Irenaeus, Ignatius, Athanasius and the Cappadocians,
as Father-pastors, i.e. those who showed in a particular way the novelty
inherent in Christian thought at the ontological level, more than the Father-
philosophers, such as Justin or Origen, who did not fully free themselves
from the conceptual horizon of classical philosophy (cf. ibid., pp. 62f.).
226.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 88.
227.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 50; «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ
πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 84.
228.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in ibid., p. 91.
229.
Cf. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, p. 162.
230.
Cf. Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 57. Prestige clarifies that Sabellius’ use
of prosōpon in theology and the discredit into which the term is said to have
64 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

technical and not very metaphysical expression to speak of ‘permanent

and objective forms or Persons’.231 Hippolytus is the first to use
prosōpon for the Trinity, although he does not expressly speak of three
prosōpa.232 Hippolytus, like Tertullian, talks about the one essence
in which there is a distinction of individuals or prosōpa, although
Hippolytus argues for unity of government, while Tertullian argues
for unity of substance.233 The point is that prosōpon in the East does
not acquire the importance that person acquires in the West. Although
the Cappadocians imposed prosōpon, as is evident at the Councils of
Constantinople I and II, 234 trinitarian reflection in the Greek Fathers,
as seen in the preceding paragraphs, focuses on hypostasis.235 Certainly,
Tertullian was obliged to fi x the conceptual meaning of person, given
the importance that this term had acquired. While it is true that the
Cappadocians formally identified hypostasis with prosōpon, they
assumed persona in light of the notion they were elaborating, namely
that of hypostasis. The fundamental notion for the Cappadocians is
hypostasis, and to this they refer prosōpon, as can be seen from the fact
that Basil reiterates that prosōpon exists in authentic hypostasis.236 In
this regard, it is useful to observe what Moreschini writes about Basil.
He says that:

fallen is a legend. It turned out instead that prosōpon was little used because
of its non-metaphysical character (cf. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought,
p. 113).
231.
Ibid., p. 162.
232.
Cf. ibid., p. 159. Prestige puts forward the hypothesis that Hippolytus is
Tertullian’s source.
233.
Cf. Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 58.
234.
Cf. ibid., p. 59. The Council of 381 spoke of ‘an ousia … in three perfect
hypostaseis, that is in three perfect prosōpa’ – οὐσία μιᾶς … ἐν τρισὶ
τελειοτάταις ὑποστάσεσιν, ἤγουν τρισὶ τελείοις προσώποις (G. Alberigo
et al. [eds], Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta [Bologna: EDB, 1991],
p. 28). The Council of 553 spoke of: ‘a deity in three hypostaseis, i.e.
prosōpa’ – μίαν θεότητα ἐν τρισὶν ὑποστάσεσιν ἤγουν προσώποις (ibid.,
p. 114).
235.
This point is of great importance and is confirmed by Milano: ‘It is on the
term hypóstasis and not on prósopon, that the Greeks … in their native
speculative attitude, distinguishing the reason for being (ousía) and
that of existing in particular (hyparxis), will focus their theological and
philosophical reflections’ (Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 88).
236.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 214.4 (PG 32, 789B).
The Cappadocians 65

In order to safeguard, within the divine ousia, the distinction

of the Persons, it is not sufficient to distinguish three prosopa
but it is necessary that each prosopon should have the
consistency of a true hypostasis (Ep. 210.5). Therefore, only
rarely does Basil use this term to indicate the divine Persons,
and only where the identification between prosopon and
hypostasis is clear (Ep. 52.3; The Holy Spirit 18.45).237

On the basis of what has been said, rather than an ‘exchange on equal
terms’ between hypostasis and prosōpon, as Zizioulas claims, in the
sense that the former provided the ontological character, the latter the
personal/relational one, it seems that it was more the term hypostasis
that attracted the term prosōpon into its semantic and conceptual field.
It seems more plausible that the Cappadocians, having elaborated
the notion of hypostasis in an ontological sense and in this case in a
‘personal’/relational sense, given the importance that persona/prosōpon
had acquired thanks to Tertullian and Hippolytus, identified the two
terms, giving metaphysical value to the latter.238
The term prosōpon, which the Fathers took from Greek thought, or
rather from common language, does not in itself clearly exhibit the
relational character that Zizioulas sees in it; more simply, as Milano

237.
Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 260. Basil writes: ‘the hypostasis of the
Father makes itself known in the form of the Son’ – ἡ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὑπόστασις
ἑν τῇ τοῦ Ὑἱοῦ μορφῇ ἐπιγνώσκεται (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.8 [PG
32, 340C]). As Milano observes, John Damascene seems to confirm this:
prosōpon and hypostasis refer to the same thing, but the former indicates
the ‘individual’, the latter the ‘object’ (cf. John Damascene, Dialectica, 43
[PG 94, 613B]; Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 56). Prestige explains: the
two terms are used in theology to indicate the same thing but according
to different points of view: prosōpon designates the single individual, that
which exists through its activities or characteristics, an object empirically
distinct from others; hypostasis, the object, a concrete, objective entity;
atomon, the particular (cf. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, pp. 158, 235).
238.
This reading is close to Lossky’s; cf. ‘La notion théologique de la personne
humaine’, Messager 24 (1955), pp. 227–35; then published as chapter three in
À l’image et à la ressemblance de Dieu (Paris: Aubier 1967), pp. 109–21; cf. also
the remarks of A. Papanikolaou, Being with God: Trinity, Apophaticism,
and Divine-Human Communion (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre
Dame Press, 2006), p. 130.
66 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

observes, it indicates ‘a particular and distinct entity’.239 Moreover,

given prosōpon’s unmetaphysical character, and given the speculative
interest of the Cappadocians, it is unlikely that prosōpon aroused so
much interest in them. The Cappadocians seem to suggest instead
that prosōpon is a term foreign to them and that they agree to employ
it for the Trinity.240 In the case of atomon, which was not imposed on
them, they were less lenient: reference has already been made to how
the expression tria atoma had no luck in trinitarianism, as the use of
persona/prosōpon as a synonym for hypostasis took hold because of the
poverty of language in the Latin-speaking world.241
Moreover, if it is true that the Latins identified persona with hypostasis,
due to lack of language,242 one cannot conclude from this that hypostasis is
the equivalent of atomon. For the Cappadocians, the fundamental terms
for expressing the divine being were ousia/physis to indicate the general,
and hypostasis to indicate the particular, or rather, to distinguish and define

239.
Cf. Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 51. Certainly, Zizioulas’ interesting reading,
according to which prosōpon indicated, in the Greek world, the individuality
characterised by its yearning for freedom – a yearning that can be satisfied in
a non-monistic but relational ontology – cannot be totally excluded.
240.
De Halleux writes that Basil and his followers have no qualms about using
the term ‘person’ in connection with the Trinity, without giving it any
metaphysical meaning, but only to gather together in one the names of the
Father, Son and Spirit, or to oppose the one prosōpon of the Marcellians;
while the ontological substratum of trinitarian persons, is expressed by the
term hypostasis. See A. de Halleux, ‘ “Hypostase” et “personne” dans la
formation du dogme trinitaire (ca 375–381)’, Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique
79, no. 2 (1984), pp. 313–69; 79, no. 3 (1984), pp. 625–70; here at pp. 665–66.
241.
Cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 271. In this way, Loudovikos
seems to contradict his thesis according to which atomon, hypostasis and
prosōpon are perfectly equivalent in their meaning in trinitarian reflection. If
it is possible to recognise a certain juxtaposition between the three terms, for
example, on an anthropological level, why did the Cappadocians, in trinitarian
thought, not accept atomon as they did persona? Zizioulas notes that there
are only two instances of the use of atomon in trinitarian discussions, one
in Leontius of Byzantium, Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos (PG 86/1,
1305C) and one in Pseudo-Cyril of Alexandria (now restored to John
of Damascus), De Sacrosancta Trinitate, XIII (PG 77, 1149B) (cf. ‘Appendix:
Person and Individual’, p. 175).
242.
Cf. Severinus Boethius, Liber de Persona et Duabus Naturis Contra
Eutychen et Nestorium, III (PL 64, 1343–45); Loudovikos, ‘Possession or
Wholeness?’, p. 271.
The Cappadocians 67

what is common and what is particular.243 To this was added prosōpon, to

indicate, according to common language, the particular. The Latins had
the terms natura/essentia/substantia to indicate the general, and persona
to indicate the particular. They lacked a term that would act as a link, as
hypostasis was for the Cappadocians. Consider also how Tertullian used
persona in the trinitarian sphere, in a sense still fundamentally linked to
oikonomia and not to theology, revealing here too the lack of a term such as
hypostasis, which expressed a personal, relational and ontological notion, as
it was elaborated by the Cappadocians. It is beyond the scope of this study to
address the linguistic issues surrounding the terms hypostasis and persona
in the Latin-speaking world. Instead, it is interesting to understand how the
Latins arrived at the formal synonymy of the terms hypostasis and persona.
Loudovikos rightly reminds us that Nazianzen himself,244 as already noted
with regard to Severinus Boethius, said that he accepted the term persona,
since the Latins had no terms to express the difference between hypostasis
and ousia.245 However, this may prove that the notion of hypostasis was
elaborated by the Cappadocians, according to a meaning so different
from substantia (ousia), and precisely in a ‘personal’ sense, since there was
no term closer to hypostasis than persona246 (and therefore prosōpon). At
the same time, the mere ‘acceptance’ of the term persona/prosōpon by the
Cappadocians reveals that, because of the non-ontological character of the
term prosōpon, which exposed it to Sabellian interpretations,247 it received
ontological and relational connotations from hypostasis.

Coincidence of Hypostasis and Ousia

Having clarified the meaning that Zizioulas attributes to the two
fundamental ontological categories of hypostasis and ousia, on the basis
of his reading of the Cappadocians in the trinitarian context, I shall now
deal with two basic and delicate questions of Zizioulas’ reflection: first,
that of the coincidence of hypostasis/person and ousia and, second, that
of the so-called ontological primacy of the former over the latter. The

243.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.3 (PG 32, 328–29).
244.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 21.35 (PG 35, 1124–25).
245.
Although it must be remembered that it was already accepted in the East
in Origen’s trinitarian reflection. In this sense, it would be interesting to
understand the relationship between the Latins and Origen on this point.
246.
It is clear that the meaning of the term ‘person’, taken from the sphere
of human realities, underwent a profound redefinition when it came to
illustrate the divine reality.
247.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 84.
68 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

affirmation of the coincidence of hypostasis and ousia is of paramount

importance, since it is closely connected to the question of the ontological
monarchy of the Father, as we shall see.
The coincidence of hypostasis and ousia is formally affirmed by
Zizioulas several times.248 According to him, reflection on divine
hypostasis, as a notion expressing divine ousia, in its particular mode of
existence connected with the relations of origin, implies the exclusion of
a conception of an ousia possessed only by a hypostasis prior or previous
to the Three,249 and from which the other hypostaseis would have arisen
as presentations of a part of it.250 Zizioulas maintains the assumption that
for the Fathers no division of any kind is admissible in God, and that
also only the distinction between the Three expressed by the idiotētes
(‘distinctive properties’) is admissible, which in no way divide, but
rather express particularity,251 or even more precisely, particularity in
relation to what is common.252 From this Zizioulas concludes that every
hypostasis, given the indivisibility of ousia, ‘coinciding fully into one and
the same nature, carried in its totality’.253 That hypostasis is the bearer of
the whole and undivided ousia is seen to be affirmed by Basil when he
writes: ‘God is therefore one, inasmuch as through both [the Father and
the Son] one aspect is observed which is integrally manifested in both.’254
To the ontological integrity of the substance, insofar as it is integrally
manifested in the person, Zizioulas connects the ontological integrity of
the person, insofar as it presents the substance in its entirety. Second, to

248.
Cf. for example, ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 76; ‘On Being
Other’, p. 56.
249.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 140.
250.
Cf. ibid., p. 129; ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 106–7.
251.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.14 (PG 36, 148–49).
252.
Hypostasis defines and distinguishes what is particular and what is
common. The divine nature is undivided and is found in the three distinct
beings (cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.5 [PG 32, 333–36]).
253.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 107. Zizioulas cites
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 15 (PG 45, 125) (cf. ‘The Trinity and
Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159).
254.
Εἶς οὖν Θεὸς, ἐπειδὴ δι᾽ἀμφοτέρων ἕν εἶδος θεωρεῖται ὁλοκλήρως ἐν
ἀμφοτέροις δεικνύμενον (Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 [PG 31, 608C]).
Note how Basil talks about the unity/oneness of God in relation to the one ousia
carried entirely by the hypostaseis. Personal/causal and substantial perspectives
are not excluded. The point is to try to establish how they go together.
The Cappadocians 69

this is connected, as Zizioulas recalls and is affirmed by Basil (‘God is

therefore one’), the divine unity.255
Zizioulas shows how his thesis of the coincidence of hypostasis and
ousia is seen in the Fathers not only in their thinking on hypostasis,
as the full hypostasisation of the one and undivided ousia, but also in
their doctrine of perichōrēsis, expressed by Zizioulas in terms of the
‘co-inherence’ of the hypostaseis with each other. For the hypostasis,
being the bearer of ousia in its totality coincides with being co-inherent
with the other hypostaseis. Basil writes, in a passage quoted by Zizioulas:

Whatever the Father is, is also found in the Son, and whatever
the Son is, is also found in the Father. The Son is found in
his entirety in him. Therefore, the hypostasis of the Son is the
image and likeness by which the Father can be known, and the
hypostasis of the Father is known in the image of the Son.256

Zizioulas continues:

The divine substance cannot be broken up; each person

possesses the whole being of God. God is not partitioned, as
Saint Gregory Nazianzus puts it. The divine being is found
in full in persons who are distinct from one another, so each
person exists within the other persons.257

255.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 62.
256.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.8 (PG 32, 340C); Lectures in Christian Dogmatics,
pp. 62–63.
257.
Ibid., p. 63. Zizioulas expresses the same concept, of the one indivisible
divine ousia ‘possessed’ by the hypostaseis, also by means of the verb ‘to
bring’ – ‘bearer’ (ibid.). The idea of possession of the ousia by the hypostasis
has been criticised by Loudovikos (cf. ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 262),
as revealing a dialectical relationship (of Aristotelian/Neoplatonic matrix)
between the two terms, in which the latter is subjugated to the former. First
of all, it should be noted that for Zizioulas hypostasis possesses ousia and vice
versa: ‘God’s nature is hypostatic, or personal, that is, because it possesses
a “mode of being” ’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 28). Understanding hypostasis
as the mode of existence of ousia implies the exclusion of a ‘dictatorial’
conception of the former with respect to the latter. The idea of possession
in Zizioulas is to be understood, rather, in terms of characterisation: the
particular is the particular characterisation of general properties. This
opens up the question of the ontological principle. However, even here it is
70 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Now, this co-incorporation is to be understood, according to

Zizioulas, on the basis of the ontological-relational constitution of
hypostasis. Gregory of Nyssa’s teaching on the Father and the Son quoted
by Zizioulas – ‘so closely is the one implied in the other and concordant
with it; and both of them are so discerned in the one that one cannot
be conceived without the other’258 – is based on the already mentioned
principle of Gregory of Nazianzus that ‘the name Father defines a
relationship’.259 In this sense we have a deepening of what has already
been observed with Zizioulas regarding homoousion, which is a notion
relating to the equality of the Three, to what they have in common; this
commonality refers to natural properties – goodness, eternity, holiness
etc. – but the natural properties indicate the reality of the divine ousia
as fully possessed by the Three as relational beings. Homoousion refers to
the Three, as unique hypostasisations of the ousia in its totality, as a fact
related to the co-relation between them. It is in this sense that Basil, in
reference to substance, had spoken of koinōnia of the Godhead.260
We understand therefore that the coincidence of hypostasis and ousia,
of which Zizioulas speaks, does not mean, in the Athanasian way, that
the term hypostasis is equivalent to that of ousia.261 Athanasius used
the expression ‘the Three’ to speak of the Father, the Son and the Holy
Spirit, whereas he used the terms hypostasis or ousia to speak of what is

not necessarily the case that, if one states that the ‘how’ is the ontological
principle of the ‘what’, this implies a view that separates and opposes the
two terms, to the detriment of one of them.
258.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 122; Oὕτως ἔγκειται καὶ ἐνήρμοσται τῷ ἑτέρῳ τὸ
ἕτερον καὶ ἐν τῷ ἑνὶ καθορᾶται ἀμφότερα, ὠς μὴ ἂν ἐφ᾽ἑαυτοῦ νοηθῆναι
τούτων τι χωρὶς τοῦ ἄλλου (Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, IV.8
[PG 45, 669C]).
259.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 126; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG
36, 96A). Nyssen himself begins his reasoning thus: ‘What thing, in fact, is
more naturally and harmoniously connatural and adapted to another, than
the Son, who in his meaning introduces a relation to the Father?’ – Tί γὰρ
οὕτω προσφυῶς τε καὶ ἁρμοδίως ἄλλο ἄλλῳ ἐμφύεταί τε καὶ ἐναρμμόζεται
ὡς ἡ σχετικὴ πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα τοῦ Υἱοῦ σημασία (Gregory of Nyssa,
Contra Eunomium, IV.8 [PG 45, 669C]).
260.
It will be shown how nature as movement responds to a teaching of
Maximus the Confessor that Zizioulas appeals to.
261.
Or, in the Eunomian way, ousia is the hypostasis of the Father. We shall
return to Eunomius in the next chapter.
The Cappadocians 71

common.262 With Athanasius and the neo-Nicenes, the guarantors of

orthodoxy, while hypostasis still fluctuated in meaning, ousia was accepted
as indicating the common substratum. It is evident that in this overall
lack of terminological clarity, even with important intuitions such as
connecting the being of the Son to the divine substance, it was impossible
to theorise about the distinction between what is peculiar to the Trinity
and what is common and, above all, to come to understand, as Zizioulas
shows, that the characteristic of God’s being is precisely the coincidence,
without confusion, of these two realities.263
As a consequence of this, note that the coincidence affirmed by
Zizioulas between hypostasis and ousia opens up a – so to speak – ‘holistic’
conception of both. The hypostasis represents what is particular, in the
sense that it is the common ousia, determined according to a hypostatic
property, connected to a relation of origin; the ousia represents what
is common, as that complex of natural properties, connected to the
co-relation of the hypostaseis among them.264
What needs to be retained, in the light of what has emerged, is the
clear affirmation of the non-separation of hypostasis and ousia – ‘in God

262.
Although he tried to avoid using hypostasis, he used the term in the
trinitarian context, as well as the expression treis hypostaseis, because it had
taken hold with Origen and was very useful in responding to the Sabellians.
263.
In this sense, Loudovikos’ statement that homoousion is what distinguishes
the Trinity from the Plotinian triad (cf. Loudovikos, ‘Consubstantiality
Beyond Perichoresis’, p. 2), is in accordance with the Cappadocians, if
one understands homoousion not as a causal principle of divine being,
but as a fundamental aspect of the coincidence between hypostasis and
ousia and insofar as this coincidence is led back – this is the main point
that I shall discuss in the next paragraph – to the reality of hypostasis as
a notion that expresses the hypostatic particularity and the generality/
communality of ousia. To see in the sole notion of ousia/homoousia, and
not also in that of hypostasis, the feature that distinguishes the Trinity
from the triads that classical philosophy has elaborated is not, according
to Zizioulas, in accordance with the Cappadocians (cf. ‘Person and Nature’,
p. 87). Therefore, the term homoousion is not, according to Zizioulas,
translatable as ‘one being’ (ibid.; the reference is to Thomas F. Torrance,
whose trinitarian formula, one being, three persons, is explanatory of the
substantialist approach that he sees in Athanasius and Epiphanius; cf. T.F.
Torrance, The Christian Doctrine of God: One Being Three Persons, new
edn (Edinburgh and New York, Bloomsbury T. & T. Clark, 2001).
264.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 106–7.
72 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the two coincide fully’265 – that Zizioulas sees in the Fathers and that
will play a very important role in the elaboration of the reflection on the
ontological monarchy of the Father.

Ontological Primacy of Hypostasis over Ousia

The point to be clarified now is whether and how the Cappadocians tried
to understand the relationship between hypostasis and ousia, whether they
affirmed, and in what sense, that hypostasis has an ontological primacy over
ousia, and finally whether the attribution to hypostasis of an ontological
primacy necessarily means opposing hypostasis to ousia and attributing
existentialist perspectives to the Fathers.266 Given that, as has already been
pointed out, for Zizioulas the relationship between hypostasis and ousia
goes beyond the comprehension of reason,267 it is interesting to note that
on the basis of his reading of the Cappadocians he tries to investigate
something of this mystery. It will be seen that the task is rather difficult
and that only in the light of reflection on the causality of the Father can the
question be answered more fully.
First of all, as we have seen, Zizioulas shows that the divine hypostasis
and ousia are understood by the Cappadocians as two aspects of the
same reality, being,268 and this on the basis of the distinction made by
Nazianzen, present in Nyssen, and recognisable in Basil, according
to whom ousia indicates the ‘what’ a thing is, in the sense of ‘what is
common’, and hypostasis the ‘how’, in the sense of what is particular.
In this context, hypostasis and ousia form an ‘organic and unbreakable
unity’,269 such that hypostasis cannot exist without ousia, without a
tropos hyparxeōs,270 and vice versa: this is, according to Zizioulas, the
fundamental thesis of the Cappadocians.271

265.
‘On Being Other’, p. 56.
266.
Cf. Larchet, Personne et nature, pp. 233–275.
267.
Cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 25.
268.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’. De Halleux spoke, in this respect, of balanced
vision (cf. de Halleux, ‘Personnalisme ou essentialisme trinitaire chez les
Pères cappadociens?’).
269.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 88.
270.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.2 (PG 32, 325f.); Gregory of Nyssa, Contra
Eunomium, I.36 (PG 45, 337); «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in
Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 91. In fact, with regard to Nyssen’s
passage, it is found in Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I.37 (PG 45,
337).
271.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 91.
The Cappadocians 73

Moreover, in the Trinity hypostasis and ousia are in no way subject

to necessity. Zizioulas explains, in fact, on the one hand, that only
‘ “Naked” nature or ousia by indicating being qua being points not to
freedom but to ontological necessity’,272 on the other hand, that even
hypostasis, without ousia, leads to ontological monism, when he states
that ‘the notion of hypostasis, now ontological, must be completed by
that of substance, if one does not want to fall back into ontological
monism’.273 This important statement should be borne in mind. This
unity and mutual dependence between hypostasis and ousia is dictated
by the fact that for the Cappadocians, as Zizioulas points out, ‘in God,
essence and person are co-fundamental, neither is prior to the other’.274
This is affirmed, for example, by Basil, who, in presenting the difference
of meaning and the relationship between hypostasis and ousia, writes

272.
‘Personhood and Being’, p. 44. This concept, expressed in this text of 1985,
can be found in Zizioulas’ latest writings (cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 111, the
text of 2013).
273.
‘[L]a notion d’hypostasis, désormais ontologique, doit être complétée par
celle de substance, si l’on ne veut pas retomber dans le monisme ontologique’
(‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 77).
274.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 54; my italics. The term ‘prior’ can be
translated either as ‘previous’ or ‘anterior’ without any substantial difference
in meaning. It does not make a problem for Zizioulas’ idea of the distinction
between co-fundamentality and co-primacy/co-priority, i.e. the statement
that neither hypostasis nor ousia is ‘prior’ to the other, since here the term
stands for a temporal meaning: neither hypostasis nor ousia comes before
the other. More problematic is a passage in which Zizioulas affirms the
co-primariety of tropos and substance: ‘the mode of being is an inseparable
aspect of being, as primary ontologically as substance or nature’ (‘On Being
Other’, p. 25). If one makes the point that this statement, formally referring
to the tropos and not to hypostasis, is within a Christological reflection,
the problem is overcome. Zizioulas is explaining, recalling the reflection
of Maximus the Confessor, how in the Incarnation there is in Christ an
innovation in the divine and human natures with regard to their tropos. In
this context, the notion of tropos is not to be strictly identified, as already
noted, with that of hypostasis, otherwise an innovation in hypostasis would
be admitted. If, on the other hand, the argument from the Christological
context does not hold, then one might think that Zizioulas is being careless
with his words. Be that as it may, on the basis of the data I shall report
shortly, it is possible to conclude that it does not change the reading I have
offered: Zizioulas distinguishes between co-foundationality of hypostasis
and ousia and not co-primariety/co-priority of these.
74 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

that ‘each of us, in fact, participates in being for the common reason
[λόγῳ] of essence and, at the same time, is this or that, for his or her
peculiar characteristics’,275 which are referred to as hypostasis.
However, for Zizioulas, the ontological co-fundamentality of the two
notions does not imply at the same time their ontological co-primacy/
co-priority, but rather attests to the attribution of ontological primacy/
priority to hypostasis.
Zizioulas sees hypostasis as the ‘ontological principle or ontological
cause of being, that is, which causes something to be’276 in the
framework of the co-foundationality of hypostasis and ousia. In this
sense, hypostasis, in addition to meaning the ‘how’ a being is, acquires
a further meaning: hypostasis indicates the ontological principle of the
being of a being. By extension – although at this point Zizioulas seems
to abandon the precision of theological language, since he resorts to
inverted commas – hypostasis is said to be the ontological principle of the
existence (or even the mode of existence) of ousia: ‘Person “causes” nature
to exist.’277 This allows Zizioulas to conclude that, precisely by virtue of
the mode of existence, which is hypostasis, as an ontological notion, the
non-necessity of God’s being is guaranteed.

275.
Ἕκαστος γὰρ ἡμων καὶ τῷ κοινῷ τῆς οὐσίας λόγῳ τοῦ εἶναι μετέχει, καὶ
τοῖς περὶ αὐτὸν ἰδιώμασιν ὁ δεῖνά ἐστι καὶ ὁ δεῖνα (Basil of Caesarea, Ep.
214.4 [PG 32, 789AB]).
276.
[H] ὀντολογικὴ «ἀρχή» ἢ «αἰτία» τοῦ εἶναι – αὐτὸ δηλαδὴ ποὺ κάμει κάτι
νὰ εἶναι (cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια
Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 91).
277.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 90; the term person is used as a synonym for
hypostasis. All these meanings are made to coincide by Zizioulas.
Sometimes Zizioulas speaks, as we have just seen, of the person/hypostasis
as ‘the ontological “principle” or “cause” of being’ – ἡ ὀντολογικὴ «ἀρχή»
ἢ «αἰτία» τοῦ εἶναι (cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos
(ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 91); sometimes as of its ‘ontological
ultimacy’ (‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 197);
sometimes of its ‘ontological primacy over ousia’ (‘The Doctrine of God the
Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 12); sometimes as an otherness
that has a ‘primary ontological role’, an ‘ontological primacy’ (‘On Being
a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 103); sometimes as possessing
‘an ontological ultimacy or priority’ (ibid.); sometimes as possessing
‘priority … over nature’ (‘Person and Nature’, p. 105); sometimes as that
which ‘causes nature’s existence [ibid., p. 90], insofar as it constitutes “the
mode of nature’s existence” ’ (ibid., p. 102). Zizioulas cites the statement
The Cappadocians 75

In short, we can say that Zizioulas’ thesis about the relation between
hypostasis and ousia is as follows: the ontological principle of being is
not ousia in itself, because then we would have ‘naked’ ousia which, as
an anhypostatic, ‘impersonal’ reality, would be subject to ontological
necessity.278 The ontological principle of being is hypostasis not as
a reality extraneous to ousia, but as a mode of existence of ousia.279
Therefore, the assertion of the ontological priority of hypostasis over
ousia does not entitle one to think of the ontological priority of the
Three over ousia. Zizioulas, referring to Basil’s tendency, noted above,
to speak of divine ousia in terms of koinōnia, explains that this does not
mean that ‘the persons’ (note the use of the plural), i.e. the Three, have
‘ontological priority’ over ousia.280 From the context, it can be deduced

of Gregory Palamas commenting on Exodus 3:14, which has already been

seen: ‘He who is, does not come from the essence, but the essence comes
from Him who is’ – Oὐ γὰρ ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας ὁ ὦν, ἀλλ᾽ἐκ τοῦ ὄντος ἡ οὐσία
(Gregory Palamas, Triads, III.2.12, in E. Perrella et al. [eds], Atto e
luce divina: Scritti filosofici e teologici [Milan: Bompiani, 2003], pp. 270–
926, here at p. 870; cited by Zizioulas in «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ
ἀνθρώπου», p. 24; ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 198).
Larchet points out, however, that Palamas premises that ‘and yet, this very
name “ousia” designates in God precisely one of these powers’ – Καίτοι
τοῦνομα τοῦτο, ἡ ‘οὐσία’, μιᾶς τῶν τοιούτων δυνάμεων σημαντικόν ἐστιν
ἐπὶ Θεοῦ (Gregory Palamas, Triads III.2.11, in Perrella et al. [eds], Atto e
luce divina, p. 868). On this basis, Larchet argues that here the term ousia
does not indicate the substance of God but the power that gives essence and
existence to created beings, i.e. an energy (cf. Larchet, Personne et nature,
p. 290; cf. V. Perishich, ‘Person and Essence in the Theology of St Gregory
Palamas’, Philotheos 1 [2001], pp. 131–36, here at pp. 131–34).
278.
Cf. ‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 11.
Remember the important words: ‘ “Naked” nature or ousia by indicating
being qua being points not to freedom but to ontological necessity’
(‘Personhood and Being’, in Being as Communion, p. 44).
279.
‘The person, being itself the mode of nature’s existence …’ (‘Person and
Nature’, p. 102).
280.
‘This does not mean that the persons have an ontological priority over
the one substance of God’ (‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, p. 134). As
we can see, here Zizioulas is not talking about the relationship between
the person and nature, which he understands in terms of the ontological
priority of the former over the latter, but about the relationship between the
Three and the one nature.
76 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

that this statement is intended to show that the concept he advocates of

God’s nature as communion and coinciding with communion should
not give rise to de-substantialising understandings of nature.
Having stated Zizioulas’ thesis, it is now necessary to evaluate critically
how it is confirmed in the Fathers. The affirmation of the ontological
primacy of hypostasis over ousia, as formulated by Zizioulas, is not
formally stated in the Fathers. In the Cappadocians there is certainly,
on the one hand, a strongly unified vision of hypostasis and ousia – there
is no hypostasis without ousia and vice versa – on the other hand, in
many passages there is a tendency to focus the understanding of the
Trinity on the hypostaseis, on the tropos hyparxeōs, on the koinōnia
kata physin and, in particular, as will be seen in the next chapter, on the
hypostasis of the Father. On this basis, it can be acknowledged that the
Cappadocians, even if they did not express themselves formally, made it
possible to pose the problem and suggested a direction to follow.
The paper in which Zizioulas deals more specifically with this
question is ‘Person and Nature’, which is actually about Maximus
the Confessor – although the author refers several times to the
Cappadocians – and will be taken up extensively in the section below,
‘The Will and Natural Freedom, the Active Role of Ousia and the
Ontological Primacy of Hypostasis’. In it he limits himself to reflecting
on the principles – ousia is not without hypostasis, hypostasis is not
without ousia, but it is the latter that gives existence to the former –
abstracting them for the most part from the trinitarian dynamic, that
is, from the causal process proper to the Father, with the result of not
being fully convincing. The question of the ontological primacy of
hypostasis over ousia can find some clarification, on closer inspection,
only if we consider hypostasis not understood at a general level,281 but
at the specific level of the Father. However, drawing attention to the
question of the ontological primacy of hypostasis over ousia, after
having dealt with the notion of hypostasis, is important and inevitable,
since it brings out the relevance of the doctrine on the ontological
monarchy of the Father. I therefore anticipate a few considerations that
will be taken up more fully in the next chapter, also presenting the
relative positions of some scholars. I shall proceed by recalling what
Zizioulas states, namely that: ‘In God, the two realities [of hypostasis
and ousia] coincide fully. The divine persons exist not as the result

281.
While it is understood that this applies to divine, angelic and human
hypostasis in the uncorrupted state of creation.
The Cappadocians 77

of given natural laws, but because the Father freely brings them into
being simultaneously as ‘one’ and ‘many’, as three persons and one
substance.’282
This statement is based, for example, on Basil, who argues that, when
one talks about a single essence (μίαν οὐσίαν) one must not mean the
Father and the Son coming from a higher essence (οὐσίας ὑπερκειμένης),
but ‘that there is a subsistent Son coming from a principle which is the
Father’ (ἐκ τῆς ἀρχῆς τοῦ Πατρὸς τὸν Υἱὸν ὑποστάντα).283 As we can
see, the existence of the one ousia is traced back to the hypostasis of the
Father, as the archē of the Son. Therefore, the hypostasis of the Father is
the ontological principle of the Son, of ‘how’ the divine ousia exists, and
therefore, by extension, of its existence.
From this it would appear that Zizioulas’ position is plausible.
Among those who follow Zizioulas’ line are Catherine M. LaCugna and
Andrea Milano. The former has explicitly stated that the Cappadocians
understood the Trinity in such a way that ‘hypostasis (person) was
predicated as having priority over ousia and constitutive of it’.284 Milano
observes that, for Basil, ‘the ousía common to the hypostáseis is not to
be considered as superior to them (ousía hyperkeiméne) and divided
among them (ex enós meristhénta): it is in fact in the Father, from whom
the Son proceeds, that it has its principle (arché) and source (peghé)’.285

282.
‘[I]n God the two coincide fully. The divine persons exist not as a result of
given natural laws, but because the Father freely brings them into being
simultaneously as “one” and “many”, as three persons and one substance’
(‘On Being Other’, p. 56).
283.
Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 (PG 31, 605B). Going beyond the
Cappadocians, Prestige notes how Leontius of Byzantium, in the
Christological sphere, and, in this case, with reference to the two natures of
Christ, talks about the mode (tropos) of existence as the principle (logos) of
existence, alluding to it – according to Prestige – as a ‘constitutive principle’
(cf. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, p. 248; cf. Leontius of Byzantium,
Contra Nestorianos et Eutychianos, Prologue [PG 86A, 1269CD]).
284.
‘[H]ypostasis (person) was predicated as prior to and constitutive of ousia
(nature)’ (C.M. LaCugna, God for Us: The Trinity and Christian Life [San
Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1991], p. 389).
285.
Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 130. Jesmond Micallef has observed that:
‘T.F. Torrance, who asserts the superiority of the Athanasian-Epiphanian-
Cyriline tradition over the trinitarian teaching of Gregory of Nazianzus,
ignores some important theological and philosophical problems that the
Cappadocian Fathers have treated with their ontology of personhood’ (J.
78 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

De Halleux’s analysis is particularly interesting. He sees in the

Cappadocians a strong search for balance between the affirmation of
ousia and homoousion, in relation to the unity of God, and hypostaseis,
in relation to the particularity of the Three. De Halleux discerns
in the Fathers a tendency to emphasise the first or second aspect,
depending on the context.286 One is led to think that the theology of
the Cappadocians still oscillates between the affirmation of one term
and another without reaching a complete synthesis. According to de
Halleux, this is a response both to a ‘concern for balance’287 in order to
safeguard the orthodox interpretation of the Creed and to a theological
vision that does not yet fully compose the two terms. If such a synthesis
does not emerge clearly, de Halleux himself acknowledges that the
biblical language, which greatly informs the Cappadocian reflection,
brings the latter to a personalist level,288 pointing out, without implying
any form of anti-essentialism,289 that: ‘We admit … that the seemingly
philosophical terms ‘ousia’ and ‘hypostasis’ of the Greek trinitarian
formula imply a theology of the person distinguished from the essence,
and that Cappadocian ontology can thus serve as a basis for Christian
personalism today.’290
If a certain personalism in the Cappadocians seems to be established,
the question is whether they are ‘personalists and essentialists’,291 as de
Halleux claims, or promoters of a ‘non-anti-essentialist personalism’,
as Zizioulas claims. In terms of what has been examined so far, if one
agrees with de Halleux that the question of the ontological principle
has not been formally enunciated, the emergence of the ontological
notion of hypostasis, of tropos hyparxeōs, of reciprocal schesis, of ousia
as koinōnia of the Godhead and, above all, as will be seen, of the
monarchy of the Father, pushes in the direction of a concentration on
hypostasis as the primary ontological reality in which the datum of ousia

Micallef, Trinitarian Ontology: The Concept of the Person for John D.

Zizioulas [Toulouse: Domuni Press, 2020], p. 186).
286.
As is the case, for example, if the interlocutors are the Neo-Arians or
the Semi-Arians or the Sabellians (cf. de Halleux, ‘Personnalisme ou
essentialisme trinitaire chez les Pères cappadociens?’, p. 284).
287.
Cf. ibid., p. 286.
288.
Cf. ibid., p. 291.
289.
Cf. ibid., p. 284.
290.
Ibid.
291.
Cf. ibid., p. 290.
The Cappadocians 79

is integrated.292 The reflection on the accentuation of the ontological

integrity of the three hypostaseis, which are not in opposition to the
common ousia, since they are the presentation of the one and indivisible
ousia, seems to reveal, even if only embryonically, the emergence of the
deepening, in a ‘personalist’ sense, of the understanding of the mystery
of the trinitarian being. The thesis of the Fathers on the relevance of
the ontological integrity of the three hypostaseis, only as a unilateral
doctrinal remark, aimed at confronting the Sabellians, perhaps, is
reductive. It will be seen whether, and how, with the doctrine of the
Father as the cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit, the Cappadocians,
according to Zizioulas, were able to provide decisive elements for a greater
understanding of their supposed personalist trinitarian ontology. On
this basis, the following questions are posed, which I shall try to answer
in the next chapter: are causality and homoousianity two ontological
principles in God, or – so to speak – is one inherent in the other, so that
in God only one ontological principle is predicated?

The Cappadocian Theology of Hypostasis in the Dogmatic

Definition of the Church: Council of Constantinople I
The doctrinal formulations of the Creed, elaborated by the Councils
of Nicaea and Constantinople I, make it possible to examine more
closely the question of personalism, supposed or even suggested by
the Cappadocians, in the understanding of the trinitarian mystery.
The Cappadocians had a great influence on the formulations of the
Constantinopolitan Creed. In particular, Zizioulas refers to the
transition that was made from Nicaea to Constantinople, regarding two
fundamental questions, that of the generation of the Son and that of
the divinity of the Holy Spirit.293 These will be dealt with exhaustively

292.
Moreover, it is commonly accepted that the Cappadocian presentation
of the Trinity is based on the assumption of a ‘triplicity of objective
presentation rather than the unity of essential being’ (Prestige, God in
Patristic Thought, p. 249).
293.
Zizioulas frames his reflections on the novelty that the Council of
Constantinople represented, highlighting what he considers to be the
‘new theological ideas’ that emerged after Nicaea and to which, in various
ways, reference has already been made: the establishment of the creation-
increation dialectic, the questioning of substantive language and the
emergence of the notion of person, the appearance of doxological theology
and the opposition between theologia and oikonomia (cf. ‘Pneumatology
and the Importance of the Person’, pp. 178–205).
80 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

in the next chapter, but here it is appropriate to preface them with

some considerations on another issue, that of their conciliar dogmatic
formulation, in relation to the influence of the Cappadocians, in order
to identify further traces of a personalist approach.
I now turn to the first aspect, that of the generation of the Son. Many
times Zizioulas has referred to the passage from the expression of the
Nicene Creed ‘from the substance of the Father’ (ek tēs ousias tou Patros)
to that of the Creed of Constantinople I ‘from the Father’ (ek tou Patros) to
describe the generation of the Son. For him, this represents a real ‘alteration’
of the Creed, a non-accidental change294 that demonstrates the personalist
influence of the Cappadocians.295 According to Zizioulas, the Cappadocian
perspective differs from the Nicene doctrine of homoousion, which revealed
that for the Council Fathers ousia was the primary ontological category but,
at the same time, develops the datum of the relational character of ousia
suggested by Athanasius, working on the notion of hypostasis, primarily
that of the Father.296
If the Constantinopolitan trinitarian formulation is read in substan-
tial discontinuity with the Nicene one,297 this discontinuity emerged with
time. Zizioulas believes that ‘substantialist language in theology was
being gradually replaced by that of the person’298 because of the Arians’
attack on the Nicene doctrine of homoousion, accused of implying the
introduction of necessity into the divine being.299 As we have seen,
Athanasius responded to these attacks by denying that the generation of
the Son was involuntary. Gregory of Nazianzus is credited with having

294.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 162.
295.
If the personalism of the Cappadocians and their ‘personalist’ influence on
the Council are to be proved, the thesis of their influence on the Council is
mostly unequivocal if one considers the fact that Gregory of Nazianzus, an
important figure at that time, presided over it for a certain period of time
and that Nyssen was present at it.
296.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 77.
297.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness. Zizioulas’
hermeneutics of discontinuity, however, differ from von Harnack’s,
according to which a new orthodoxy arose in Constantinople because the
perspective of the Homoiousians was imposed (cf. Kelly, Early Christian
Creeds, pp. 332–33; A. von Harnack, Lehrbuch der Dogmengeschichte
[Freiburg im Breisgau: Mohr, 1888], p. 277).
298.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 182; my italics.
299.
Ibid.
The Cappadocians 81

further developed the Council’s teaching with respect to Athanasius,

with his reflection on the Father as the cause of divine being.300
In this regard, Zizioulas draws attention to a rather relevant aspect that
emerges both in the case of the question of the generation of the Son and
in that of pneumatology. The supposedly more ‘personalist’ approach
derives, as already noted, from the Cappadocians’ search for a theology
that adheres to the biblical perspective. In this way, the substantialist
language derived from classical philosophy, even if rethought, gives way
to the ‘personalist’ understanding of God present in Scripture – God
is the Father, the Father and the Son are one, the Son comes from the
Father301 – as well as in the most ancient Eastern symbols.302
This change in the formulation of the Creed, for Zizioulas, is
overlooked by historians of dogma, such as Kelly,303 while it is possible to
observe that it does not escape Milano, who points out that, moreover,
it was already present, albeit in a more embryonic state, in Athanasius.
Moreschini, for his part, deepens the matter, noting that, for Basil, the
Nicene expression ‘from the substance of the Father’ was specifically
understood in its anti-Arian function, while the expression ‘from the
Father’ was more indicative of the doctrine of salvation.304
Zizioulas thus identifies the new elements that emerged in
Constantinople compared to Nicaea. First, there was the consecration
of the distinction between hypostasis and ousia, terms that in Nicaea
could still be understood with the same meaning. Second, there was the
assimilation, still absent in Nicaea, of prosōpon and hypostasis. Third,
with regard to homoousion, this term was put on the back burner, since
it would have implied the postulation of a substance prior to the Three –
God as an ousia in the sense of a hypostasis, in the Sabellian sense – or of
the Father as possessor of the ousia in its totality regardless of his schesis
with the Son. In this sense, Zizioulas’ remark does not in itself reveal
an ‘anti-essentialist personalism’. Rather, Zizioulas shows that, once the
datum of the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father was secured,
which at Nicaea was explained by recourse to the notion of ousia and at
Constantinople was explained by recourse to the Cappadocian doctrine

300.
Cf. ibid.
301.
Cf. for example, Galatians 1:3; John 5:26; 10:30.
302.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 120.
303.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 162;
Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, pp. 332–33.
304.
Cf. Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 253; Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 125
(PG 32, 545–52).
82 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

of the hypostasis, a deeper level of understanding of consubstantiality

and, in the end, of divine unity, that is, of consubstantiality and unity,
understood from the hypostasis of the Father, was reached.305
On the pneumatological question, as is well known, a way was found
in Constantinople to affirm the divinity of the Holy Spirit. Here too
Zizioulas shows the influence of Basil in the Council’s formulations and,
in this case, its personalist character.
First of all, Zizioulas addresses the question of the abandonment of
the term homoousion to define the divinity of the Holy Spirit. If this had
been used to affirm the divinity of the Son, distinguishing it from the
creaturality of creation, Zizioulas observes that Basil prefers to express
himself in biblical language, side by side with a procedure of negation.
Basil, in fact, is cautious in openly proclaiming the divinity of the Holy
Spirit and limits himself to affirming that he is not a creature and that
he shares the same divine dignity as the Father and the Son,306 as can
be deduced from his reflection on the ad extra activity of God. The
Council, in line with Basil, would have taken up the reticence to use
the term homoousion in reference to the Holy Spirit and, again, would
have opted for biblical language: the Holy Spirit is ‘Lord’, ‘Giver of life’,
‘has spoken through the prophets’ etc.307 Above all, it is stated that ‘the
Spirit proceeds from the Father’ – τὸ ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον –
an expression that represents another scriptural reference.308 In addition
to biblical language, Zizioulas traces elements of liturgical language:
the Holy Spirit is to be ‘worshipped and glorified together with the
Father and the Son’ (homotimia). Here, too, he points to the influence
of Basil, since it was he who upheld the divinity of the Holy Spirit in
terms of equal honour in adoration.309 Thus, philosophical language
and language relating to oikonomia, replaced by biblical language and
language relating to liturgical experience and, ultimately, theologia,310
attests to a more personalist view of the trinitarian mystery than the

305.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 118.
306.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 113 (PG 32, 525–28); 114 (PG 32, 528–29);
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 183.
307.
Cf. DZ, 150; 2 Corinthians 3:17; Romans 8:2; John 6:63; 15:26; 2 Corinthians
3:6; 2 Peter 1:21.
308.
Cf. John 15:26; ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, 190–95.
309.
‘[W]orshipped and glorified together with the Father and the Son’ (ibid.,
p. 191). This point is expressed several times by Basil (cf. for example, Ep.
90.2 [PG 32, 473C]).
310.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 189.
The Cappadocians 83

Nicene one. The Constantinopolitan Creed did not therefore limit itself
to indicating only the uncreated nature of the Holy Spirit, but took care
to affirm the hypostatic distinction of the Three, and to clarify the terms
with which to understand the generation of the Son and the procession
of the Holy Spirit, as processes internal to the Trinity, and which concern
the hypostatic level (the ‘how’ of the thing and not the ‘what’) by virtue
of which it is not possible to think of an ousia as a principle prior to the
Three, or of a transmission of this that entails its subdivision.
Having said this, we can ask ourselves whether this Council really
did accept at a magisterial level the Basilian personalism supported
by Zizioulas. It is certainly necessary to recognise, as he does, the
conciliatory intentions of the various parties – those who accepted
and those who rejected homoousion311 – implemented by Theodosius
and Basil himself. Moreover, with Moreschini it is possible to recall
Manlio Simonetti’s observation that Basil was firmly convinced that ‘in
matters of faith it was appropriate to say only what was indispensable’.312
However, does the dogmatic formulation that affirms the divinity of the
Holy Spirit, avoiding homoousion, mark a development, in a personalist
sense, as he believes, of the understanding of dogma? Zizioulas is of
the opinion that, although Basil’s contribution was also inspired by
reasons of ecclesiastical policy, this does not detract from the fact that
he expressed a very precise theological perspective, which deepened the
understanding of the trinitarian mystery. If it is true that the adoption
of formulations that took up the biblical and liturgical linguistic
register was strategic, in that they were less attackable, since they did
not formally explicate, through recourse to homoousion, the divinity
of the Holy Spirit, it is not to be underestimated that the recovery of
the biblical and liturgical point of view brought the discourse back to a
‘personalist’ approach with ontological content. Moreover, as we have
seen, recourse to the notion of con-glorification and to the datum of
hypostatic derivation, in order to express and in some cases ground
consubstantiality, did not appear for the first time at the Council
but characterised Basil’s reflection.313 In this sense, the work of the

311.
Cf. ibid., p. 183.
312.
Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 257.
313.
As for con-glorification, De Spiritu Sancto, the treatise in which Basil
presents his doxology under the banner of meta/syn, dates from 374–75;
as for the hypostatic derivation from which consubstantiality follows,
the homily in which Basil affirms that ‘there is identity of essence in that
the Son comes from the Father’ – Τὸ δὲ τῆς οὐσίας ταυτὸν, ἐπειδὴ ἐκ τοῦ
84 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Cappadocians would have consisted in understanding and developing

this biblical and liturgical point of view by means of the speculative
attitude proper to their Greek mind and by means of the philosophical
tools provided to them by classical Greek thought.

Maximus the Confessor: The Personalist Deepening of

the Notion of Hypostasis as an Ontological Principle
of the Freedom of Nature
Zizioulas pays great attention to the theology of Maximus the Confessor,
from whom he claims to have derived the criterion of his theological
personalism.314 In particular, Maximian reflection is considered as a
development of Cappadocian ontology, with regard to the unitary view
of the relationship between hypostasis and ousia and the ontological
primacy of the former over the latter.
It should be borne in mind that the Confessor’s focus is not on the
Trinity, but on Christology and, hence, anthropology, the areas in
which he had to concentrate most in order to respond to the heresy
of monoenergism. However, the Maximian reflections on Christ and
man are well connected to those on the Trinity and, more generally, to
ontological questions and, as such, are taken up and elaborated upon by
Zizioulas.

The Logos Physeōs as ‘Personalised Nature’

First of all, Zizioulas points out that for Maximus, in line with the
Cappadocians, the terms hypostasis and ousia are understood as
ontological categories:315 the otherness referred to hypostasis and the unity
referred to ousia constitute for Maximus the ‘quintessence’ of the whole of
ontology.316 In fact, the Confessor takes up the Cappadocian conception of
hypostasis as a notion that expresses what is particular and as a synonym
of prosōpon/persona.317 In this regard, Zizioulas cites the following words

Πατρὸς ὁ Υἱὸς (Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 (PG 31, 605B) – dates
from 368/69 (cf. F. Trisoglio, ‘Introduzione’, in Basil of Caesarea,
Omelie sull’Esamerone e le ventitré di argomento vario di Basilio de Cesarea,
ed. by F. Trisoglio [Milan: Bompiani, 2017], pp. 13, 15).
314.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 106.
315.
Cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 23.
316.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 97.
317.
Larchet has shown how for the Confessor, even within the framework
of the ‘flexibility’ of his vocabulary, the terms hypostasis, prosōpon and
Maximus the Confessor 85

of the Confessor in order to highlight the different conception they

express with respect to classical Greek thought: ‘according to the Fathers,
it [the hypostasis] is the particular man as distinct (ἀφοριζόμενος)
personally (προσωπικῶς) from the other man’;318 the physis is ‘the genus
(εἶδος) of the many and different members, applied to what something is
(ὁποῖόν τί ἐστιν)’.319 In this appears Maximus’ distance from the classical
Greek philosophical conception insofar as physis is not ‘the principle of
movement and rest’,320 ousia is not ‘a self-existent thing’321 and hypostasis
is not ‘ousia with idiomata’.322

atomon are equivalent in meaning (cf. Larchet, ‘Hypostasis, Person,

and Individual According to St Maximus the Confessor, with Reference
to the Cappadocians and St John of Damascus’, in A. Torrance and S.
Paschalidis (eds), Personhood in the Byzantine Christian Tradition: Early,
Medieval, and Modern Perspectives [Abingdon and New York: Routledge,
2018], pp. 47–67). A certain synonymy of the three terms is also recognised
by Zizioulas. The latter acknowledges that in Maximus the Confessor,
Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum, 16 (PG 91, 276AB), atomon
is the equivalent of prosōpon (cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 91). However, the
point for Zizioulas is that atomon expresses synonymy with hypostasis
and prosōpon only if it indicates ‘particularity’ and ‘indivisibility’. Atomon
differs from hypostasis and prosōpon in the sense of the relational character
possessed only by the latter two terms (cf. ibid.). On the other hand, Zizioulas
acknowledges the fact that, at times, hypostasis is also used by the Confessor
in a non-relational sense, as in the case of created, non-human beings, which
possess a hypostasis, but not a prosōpon (these acquire relational being in
man in Christ). However, this does not alter the fact that for God, angels and
humans, the fundamental meaning of hypostasis is equivalent to prosōpon
and has a relational content. I shall return to the term atomon later.
318.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 89; κατὰ δὲ τοὺς Πατέρες, (Ὑπόστασις) ὅ καθ᾽ἕκαστον
ἄνθρωπος, προσωπικῶς τῶν ἄλλων ἀνθρώπων ἀφοριζόμενος (Maximus
the Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum, 16 [PG 91,
276B]).
319.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 89; εἶδος κατὰ πολλῶν καὶ διαφερόντων τῷ ἀριθμῷ,
ἐν τῷ ὁποῖόν τί ἐστι (Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et
Polemica ad Marinum, 16 [PG 91, 276A]).
320.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 89; ἀρχὴ κινήσεως καὶ ἠρεμίας (Maximus the
Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum, 16 [PG 91, 276A]).
321.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 89; αὐθυπόστατον πρᾶγμα (Maximus the
Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum, 16 [PG 91, 276A]).
322.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 89; οὐσία μετὰ ἰδιωμάτων (Maximus the Confessor,
Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum, 16 [PG 91, 276B]).
86 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

At the same time, Zizioulas notes in Maximus the same distinction

made by the Cappadocians between the ‘how’ of being – hypostasis –
and the ‘what’ of being – ousia – developing, on the Christological
level, the juxtaposition between hypostasis and tropos hyparxeōs and
between ousia and logos physeōs.323 In this way, according to Zizioulas,
Maximus achieves, on the Christological and anthropological level, an
understanding of the relation between hypostasis and ousia that is even
deeper than the Cappadocian one. Therefore, in examining Zizioulas’
reading of Maximus’ notions of hypostasis and ousia, I shall focus
initially on the notions of tropos hyparxeōs and logos physeōs, to which
hypostasis and ousia are juxtaposed; then, I shall concentrate on the
question of the ontological primacy of hypostasis over ousia.
With regard to the expression logos tēs physeōs, Zizioulas discusses
how Maximus refers the term logos to both ousia and hypostasis. Citing
the various meanings attributed to logos tēs physeōs by the Confessor,
Zizioulas shows how it indicates the natural logos of being, a normative
state (kata physin),324 a natural principle and law,325 and the natural
operation that has an invariable character since we all have the same
logos.326 Ousia itself, as possessed by hypostasis, is therefore understood
as ‘personalised nature’.327 In the case of man, what is constitutive of his
being is the logos of nature, which contains within itself the purpose
and end of human existence – paraphrased by Zizioulas as ‘personal
existence’. The ‘authentic and true way of being is that which conforms

323.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 23–24; Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum
Liber, 67 (PG 91, 1036C). This point is taken up many times by Zizioulas:
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 91; ‘On Being Other’, p. 55; ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 139; ‘Person
and Nature’, pp. 92f.
324.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 107.
325.
‘The law of nature is the natural logos, which has subjected sensation to
itself for the purpose of eliminating irrationality’ - Οὐκοῦν ὁ μὲν τῆς
φύσεως νόμός ἑστιν, ἵνα συνελὼν εἴπω, λόγος φυσικὸς τὴν αἴσθησιν λαβὼν
ὑποχείριον, πρὸς ἀφαίρεσιν τῆς ἀλογίας (Maximus the Confessor,
Quaestiones ad Thalassium de Scriptura, 51 [PG 90, 725D]).
326.
Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad
Marinum, 10 (PG 91, 136D-37B).
327.
‘On Being Other’, p. 65; cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 91; Zizioulas relies here
on P. Sherwood, The Earlier ‘Ambigua’ of Saint Maximus the Confessor and
His Refutation of Origenism (Rome: Herder, 1955). On ‘hypostasised’, see
‘Person and Nature’, p. 94.
Maximus the Confessor 87

to the hypostasization of human nature in the hypostasis of Christ’.328

It is ‘nature as it exists in the hypostasis of the divine Logos’.329 This for
Zizioulas is the meaning of Maximus’ statement that the Son ‘united our
nature to himself according to the hypostasis (καθ᾽ὑπόστασιν)’.330
With regard to the connection between the logos and hypostasis,
Maximus states that ‘the logos is also the law of nature and is divine
when it receives the motion of the will, put into action in conformity
with it’.331 From this we can see that the notion of logos is not only
connected to the notion of nature, so that the logos becomes the law
of nature when it receives the motion of will from another: the logos
is not limited to the level of nature, but is also extended to that of the
person332 and concerns, as such, both the Logos of Christ and the logos of
created beings. According to Zizioulas’ reading, the logos as individual
logos represents for the Confessor not only some hypostatic ‘principle’,
but particular being itself. Zizioulas recalls, in this regard, Maximus’
teaching on the logos of creation, according to which they can only
fully exist if they are incorporated in the hypostasis of the Logos, which
constitutes the purpose (skopos) of their existence,333 citing in particular
Ambigua 7 and 42,334 in which Maximus talks about the Logos as the Son,
about the divine logos as the model of all existing reality (and therefore

328.
‘On Being Other’, p. 65; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber,
7 (PG 91, 1097B).
329.
‘On Being Other’, p. 64; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber,
7 (PG 91, 1080BC, 1084B).
330.
‘On Being Other’, p. 65; τοῦ ἑνώσαντος ἑαυτῷ καθ᾽ὑπόστασιν … τὴν
ἡμετέραν φύσιν (Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 7 [PG 91,
1097B]).
331.
[Ὁ]ς καὶ νόμος ἐστὶ φυσικός τε καὶ θεῖος, ὅταν καθ᾽ἑαυτὸν ἐνεργουμένην
λάβῃ τῆς γνώμης τὴν κίνησιν (Maximus the Confessor, Expositio
Orationis Dominicae, 8 [PG 90, 901D]; my italics).
332.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 23; ‘Person and Nature’, p. 92; Maximus the
Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 7 (PG 91, 1077C, 1080Bss.); 5 (PG 91,
1053B); Mystagogia, 23 (PG 91, 701A); Ambiguorum Liber, 1 (PG 91, 1036C).
333.
‘On Being Other’, p. 64. Larchet (Personne et nature, pp. 246–47) criticises
the attribution of hypostatic meaning to logos, but Moreschini agrees with
Zizioulas. See C. Moreschini, ‘L’immanenza di Dio nel mondo: il Logos e
i logoi delle cose nel platonismo cristiano’, Études platoniciennes 5 (2008),
pp. 101–16, at: https://journals.openedition.org/etudesplatoniciennes/846
(accessed 10 December 2019).
334.
Ambiguum 42 is cited, 7 is only mentioned; cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 91.
88 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

pre-existing), and about the logos of created things as the fruit of the
creative action of the Logos. In this sense, the logos is the ontological
principle of a particular being.
Turning now to the notion of tropos hyparxeōs, Zizioulas shows first
that, in line with the Cappadocians, Maximus refers it to hypostasis.
In the Incarnation, according to Maximus, the Son’s hypostasis is
communicated to creation insofar as his tropos hyparxeōs changes,
without changing his identity, his logos physeōs. That is, the tropos
hyparxeōs ‘adjusts being to an intention or purpose or manner of
communion’335 and, in this case, is communicated to the human ousia
assumed by the Son’s hypostasis, and to the created beings that are
hypostasised in it.336 Leaving aside some purely Christological questions
that are beyond the scope of the present study,337 I shall focus on the
question of the identification of the tropos hyparxeōs with hypostasis,
which plays a fundamental role in the relational ontology of the person.
In the Cappadocians, although not formally stated, it is admissible
that the pōs einai is connected to hypostasis and that the latter ends up
being identified ever more closely with a concrete being constituted
by the relation of origin and thus characterised by a relational tropos
hyparxeōs. Similarly, especially in the case of the Trinity, this concrete
being – hypostasis – is increasingly identified with the tropos hyparxeōs
of its being. We arrive thus at Maximus who, according to Zizioulas,

335.
‘On Being Other’, p. 24; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber,
5 (PG 91, 1056).
336.
On this see V. Cvetković, ‘The Oneness of God as Unity of Persons in
the Thought of St. Maximus the Confessor’, in S. Mitralexis, G. Steiris,
M. Podbielski and S. Lalla (eds), Maximus the Confessor as a European
Philosopher (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2017), pp. 304–15, here at p. 310.
337.
A first question concerns Incarnation. Although Zizioulas emphasises the
fact that it is in hypostasis, and therefore thanks to hypostasis, that the two
ousiai, divine and human, are united (cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 74–75), he does
not recognise any causal role for ousia in the establishment of this union. A
second aspect concerns the incorporation of the created hypostaseis into the
hypostasis of the Logos. Larchet, for example, disputes the idea that Christ
hypostasises the human hypostaseis in his hypostasis (cf. Larchet, Personne
et nature, pp. 333–35). For his part, Zizioulas affirms both the communion
of natures and the communion of beings (cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être
ecclésial, p. 83). For him, one is a sharer in the divine nature (cf. 2 Peter 1:4),
but not through a direct communion between it and human nature, but in
and through the hypostasis of the Logos (cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 25).
Maximus the Confessor 89

‘clearly and categorically equates the terms “mode of existence” (τρόπος

ὑπάρξεως), the “how” of being’s existence (ὅπως εἶναι), and hypostasis/
person’.338
According to Zizioulas, Maximus elaborates a true ‘ontology of
tropos’,339 referring to being as ‘tropical being’,340 that is, to hypostasis/
person who is in no way opposed to nature. Indeed, with the notions of
‘tropos hyparxeōs’ and ‘logos physeōs’ the close link between hypostasis
and ousia is further specified. Zizioulas’ intention is to show how, for the
Confessor, ousia in God is to be understood as a non-de-hypostasised
reality and hypostasis as a non-de-naturalised reality.341 In positive
terms, ousia exists only when it is hypostasised (ἐνυπόστατον), just as
hypostasis exists only when it is essentialised (ἐνούσιον).342 In this sense,
one understands Zizioulas’ statement that the logos of nature indicates
for Maximus precisely the ‘personalised nature’, which depends on the
action of hypostasis to ‘personalise’ nature343 and, in this case, to make
the general (ousia) exist as particular (hypostasis).344

338.
‘On Being Other’, pp. 23–24; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum
Liber, 67 (PG 91, 1400f.); 5 (PG 91, 1053B); 1 (PG 91, 1036C); Mystagogia,
23 (PG 91, 701A). For example, in the latter passage, the Confessor talks
about God being a ‘triad, according to the reason of the mode of being and
existence, though not by division or diversity or any partition’ – τριάδα δὲ
κατὰ τὸν τοῦ πῶς ὑπάρχειν καὶ ὑφεστάναι λόγον, ἀλλ᾽οὐ κατὰ διαίρεσιν ἢ
ἀλλοτρίωσιν ἢ τὸν οἱονοῦν μερισμόν – where the divinity ‘is all triad in
the hypostaseis’ – ὅλην τρίαδα τὴν αὐτὴν ταῖς ὑποστάσεσι. The question
is debated: cf. D. Skliris, ‘St. Maximus the Confessor’s Dialectic of Logos,
Mode and End in a Postmodern Context: Its Importance to a Theological
Evaluation of Race and Nationalism’, Journal of Eastern Christian Studies
69, nos 1–4 (2017), pp. 249–80, esp. p. 261.
339.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 24–25.
340.
Cf. ibid., p. 26.
341.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 94.
342.
Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad
Marinum, 23 (PG 91, 264A); B. De Angelis, Natura, persona, libertà:
L’antropologia di Massimo il Confessore (Rome: Armando, 2002), p. 195.
343.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 65.
344.
The fact that Zizioulas talks about nature as personalised nature answers
Loudovikos’ criticism that he understands nature and homoousion
‘merely as sameness’ (cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 267).
In reference to Maximus, Loudovikos talks about nature as ‘personal
otherness’ (ibid., p. 265), but this is precisely what Zizioulas suggests when
90 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Whereas the Confessor deepened the Cappadocian teaching on

divine hypostasis by applying to it the notion of logos, Zizioulas identifies
further new elements in his thought, to which we now pass.

The Will and Natural Freedom, the Active Role of Ousia and
the Ontological Primacy of Hypostasis
In order to respond to criticism of his ontology of the person, considered
too influenced by existentialism and not very faithful to the Fathers
of the Church, Zizioulas in ‘Person and Nature’ again puts forward
Maximus’ reflection on the logos physeōs. He turns to Maximus to show
that, by virtue of the divine person, nature is free and not necessitated,
and that the relationship between person and nature is not dialectical but
harmonic.345 He pays particular attention to Maximus’ Christological
discussions. In this regard, I shall briefly review Maximus’ arguments
in response to the criticism directed at him.
Zizioulas recalls as a fi xed point for the Cappadocians, as well as for
the Confessor, the fact that in the Incarnation the hypostasis of the Logos
assumes a human nature – which, in this sense, is ‘possessed’ by the
hypostasis (hypostasis ‘has’ an ousia) – and that, like nature, it is not
only possessed by hypostasis, but ‘exists only as hypostasis’, that is,346
according to a particular mode of existence.347 Although it is in being
hypostasised that nature acquires ontological content, hypostasis is
not prior to ousia. In this sense, hypostasis is the ‘subject’ of ousia348
or, in other Zizioulan terms, it is the hypostatic or personal reality, the

he talks about ‘nature personalized’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 65) and of the
coincidence of person and nature (ibid., p. 56).
345.
‘[T]here is full and perfect harmony between them’ (‘Person and Nature’,
p. 105).
346.
‘[W]hen it is hypostasized’; ‘it exists only as hypostases’ (ibid., p. 90). Zizioulas
cites Maximus the Confessor, Ep. 15 (PG 91, 545AB), in which he quotes
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 52.3 (PG 32, 393C): ‘for nothing is homoousion
in itself, but [as] other to the other’ – Οὐ γὰρ αὐτό ἐστιν ἑαυτῷ ὁμοούσιον,
ἀλλ᾽ἑτερον ἑτέρῳ. It will be shown how the full hypostasisation of nature takes
place only in the intra-trinitarian sphere, and this because of the perfectly
realised personhood of the Three, centred on the person of the Father.
347.
This reciprocal presupposition between the two terms does not therefore
refer to a neoplatonic or Aristotelian scheme of the priority of the ousia prōtē
over the ousia deutera, in the sense of a scheme, as Loudovikos summarises,
‘above-under’ (cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 265).
348.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 89.
Maximus the Confessor 91

hypostatic or personal principle, of ousia. The subject of the ousia – the

hypostasis – hypostasises the ousia and brings into existence in a unique
way that which is common, that is to say, the personalised nature that is
indicated by the logos physeōs.
Zizioulas points out that for the Confessor, nature is characterised
by ‘movement’ and ‘dynamism’.349 He writes: ‘Nature, whether divine
or human, is marked with movement. And while in God’s nature this
movement exhausts, so to say, itself in God Himself, in the human being
it is directed towards God, its Creator, seeking its rest (στάσις) in Him.’350
The nature Zizioulas is speaking of is personalised nature, that is,
the logos physeōs, since he believes that for the Cappadocians, as for
Maximus, one should not speculate on nature as such, nature in its
anhypostasised state. Zizioulas also cites Maximus’ teaching that this
movement is connected with the will and freedom of nature and that,
if nature is characterised by will and freedom, it is the person who
represents the willing subject that brings such will and freedom not only
to be exercised, but, more properly, to exist.
With regard to the affirmation of (personalised) nature, that is to say,
a nature characterised by movement, insofar as it is endowed with a will,
the Confessor explicitly talks about ‘natural will’ – θέλημα φυσικὸν – as
a rational impulse,351 which ensures that nature is neither passive nor
necessitated, neither in God nor in man in the non-decayed state, since
logos and tropos are perfectly attuned to each other.352 Zizioulas also
refers to the notion of free nature,353 to which the Confessor explicitly
refers when, for example, he writes that ‘if man is the image of the
divine nature and if this is free [autoexousios], the image is also free’.354

349.
Cf. ibid., pp. 97f., recalls how Maximus attributes the will to nature, in
polemic with the Monothelites.
350.
Ibid., pp. 97–98.
351.
Maximus the Confessor, Disputatio cum Pyrrho (PG 91, 293B).
352.
The assertion that will and freedom belong to nature, and not to the person,
reveals, according to Zizioulas, a dichotomous conception between person
and nature, and is therefore misleading (cf. ‘Person and Nature’, pp. 98–99).
For Zizioulas the clash between person and nature is proper to fallen
existence.
353.
Or also, in equivalent terms, of natural freedom, or the freedom of nature.
354.
Εἰ οὖν εἰκὼν ὁ ἄνθρωπος τῆς θείας φύσεως· αὐτεξούσιος δὲ ἡ θεία φύσις·
ἄρα καὶ ἡ εἰκών (Maximus the Confessor, Disputatio cum Pyrrho
[PG 91, 324D]). Zizioulas agrees with von Balthasar on the question of
Maximus’ attribution of freedom to nature. On this point, however, De
92 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Well then, free nature is proper to God and creation in its unfallen
state; its opposite is in fact the ‘unfree nature’ of which the Confessor
speaks in reference to the fallen state of creation.355 The affirmation of
free nature therefore does not allow nature, with its natural freedom,
to be separated from the person, otherwise the latter’s freedom would
have to be understood as another freedom with respect to the natural
one, i.e. as a freedom of choice, not an ontological freedom. The point
is therefore not to understand natural freedom as ontological freedom,
and hypostatic freedom as freedom of choice, or vice versa, but to
understand the person as the way in which free nature exists. According
to Zizioulas, the reduction of freedom to nature – ‘the human being
is free by nature’ – is therefore not intended to exhaust reflection on
the person, flattening it to nature, but, on the contrary, to recognise the
universality of freedom as a qualifying trait of every human being.356
This leads Zizioulas to the affirmation of the person as a willing
subject, in the sense that the person represents the mode of existence of
the will and natural freedom, and to the ontological principle of these.
In other words, the question concerns the ontological primacy of the
person over nature, which is an ‘undeniable fact’, according to Zizioulas,
in Maximus’ Christology.357
First of all, as we have seen, Maximus seems to rule out physis as
the primary ontological category, the principle of movement and
rest.358 Second, given the simultaneity of person and nature, Zizioulas
observes that neither nature, and with it its will and freedom, succeeds
the person, nor the person succeeds nature, as a mere executor of the
natural will and freedom. However, it is the person who ‘provides the
mode of exercise of nature’s will’:359 it is in the person that the will and

Angelis maintains that freedom belongs only to the hypostatic plane (cf.
De Angelis, Natura, persona, libertà, p. 197).
355.
‘[F]reeing in themselves nature from the damnation of death, which comes
from sin itself’ – τῆς διὰ τὴν ἁμαρτίαν κατακρίσεως τοῦ θανάτου τὴν φύσιν
ἐν ἑαυτοῖς ἐλευθερώσαντες (Maximus the Confessor, Questiones ad
Thalassium de Scriptura, 61 [PG 90, 637Af.]; cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 104).
356.
Cf. ibid., p. 101.
357.
Cf. ibid., p. 97.
358.
Cf. ibid., p. 89; Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica
ad Marinum, 16 (PG 91, 276A).
359.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 102. The Maximian distinction between the ἁπλῶς
θέλειν and the πῶς θέλειν is also recalled by Vlachos (cf. Μεταπατερική
θεολογία καί εκκλησιαστική πατερική εμπειρία, p. 345).
Maximus the Confessor 93

freedom acquire a particular mode of existence, since ‘will belongs to

nature only as “mere (simple) willing” (ἁπλῶς θέλειν), not as the “how”
of the will (πῶς θέλειν) that belongs to the person’.360
Before examining how Zizioulas justifies that one cannot speak
exhaustively of a natural will without a mode of existence or without a
willing subject, I shall now focus on how he understands an active role
of nature in relation to the person. Zizioulas only in one case, and with
reference to Maximus, has clarified his thinking on the matter, asserting
that: ‘Nature does not give being to hypostases, as if it were their “cause”,
but it holds them together in one κοινωνία τῆς φύσεως. The function,
therefore, of nature is this and nothing else: to relate the hypostases to
each other, to make them relational.’361
Despite the fact that this statement is not accompanied by a reference
to Maximus’ writings, it is possible to make some comparisons; consider,
for example, when he asserts that the divine essence, although at rest,
‘moves’, ‘moving [persons] towards one another’.362 In this way, Zizioulas
rejects the criticism that he underestimates nature, claiming that he
has always acknowledged its effective and positive role, in particular,
because of its relational character found in Athanasius. However, the
notion that ‘nature makes persons relational’ is not much explored in
his writings.
However, it is necessary to understand how to understand the
Maximian statement that ‘essence moves persons towards others’, in
relation to the fact that for Zizioulas: ‘Substance is relational not in itself
but in and through and because of the “mode of being” it possesses’.363 He
argues that, for the Confessor, ‘God’s nature is hypostatic or personal,
that is, because it possesses a “mode of being” which enables or allows it

360.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 98; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Disputatio cum
Pyrrho (PG 91, 292B-93A). Cf. the words of De Angelis: ‘acting and realizing
are things of nature, only in the way of realization does the hypostatic
aspect emerge’ (De Angelis, Natura, persona, libertà, p. 188).
361.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 90.
362.
[Ἐ]ν τῇ ἐν αλλήλοις χωρήσει (Maximus the Confessor, Scholia in
Dionysium Areopagitum [PG 4, 425A]). In this regard, Loudovikos observes
how the verb χωρέω, which can mean to move or to contain, is referred by
Nazianzen to the movement of convergence (σύννευσις) towards the One of
those who are originated by it (see Loudovikos, ‘Consubstantiality Beyond
Perichoresis’, p. 6; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 [PG 35, 520A]).
363.
‘On Being Other’, p. 25.
94 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

to relate to another nature ontologically without losing its otherness’.364

This is because it is hypostasis, not nature, that subsists for itself – ‘the
concrete and self-existing in being is the hypostasis’,365 as Maximus
attests when he writes: ‘Physis possesses the common logos of being,
and hypostasis also that of being for itself. Physis possesses only a logos
of eidos; hypostasis, on the other hand, also shows someone’.366 On the
basis of the fact that it is the particular that gives life to the general, and
not vice versa,367 Zizioulas, citing some studies such as that of Demetrios
Bathrellos, concludes that ‘a certain priority of the person over nature is
an undeniable fact in Maximus’ Christology’.368
With regard to the statement that nature makes the person relational, we
can conclude that Zizioulas distinguishes between a causal role, attributed
only to the person, as having ontological priority over nature, and an active
role, attributed to nature, consisting in relating persons, on the basis that
its mode of existence is itself relational. Therefore, the two expressions – the
person makes nature relational and nature makes the person relational –
rather than being understood as two principles (the second of which is
introduced to reject accusations of not sufficiently considering nature),
seem to indicate, in Zizioulas’ intentions, the unity of person and nature,
by virtue of the ontological priority of the person.

Hypostasis in Relation to Ekstasis

Continuing with Zizioulas in the Maximian reading of the person as an
ontological category, a further aspect needs to be examined: hypostasis,
grasped in its ecstatic character. This point is of great importance, since
it opens up reflection on the hypostasis of the Father, who brings into
being, as an ecstatic reality, hypostatic otherness. Here too, Zizioulas

364.
Ibid., p. 28; my italics.
365.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 89; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Opuscola
Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum, 23 (PG 91, 264AB). As mentioned
above, in the case of the Confessor, the term ‘self-existence’ does not
indicate a monistically understood reality, as in the case of ousia according
to ancient Greek philosophy.
366.
Ὅτι ἡ μὲν φύσις τὸν εἶναι λόγον κοινὸν ἐπέχει, ἡ δὲ ὑπόστασις, καὶ τὸν τοῦ
καθ᾽ἑαυτὸ εἶναι. Ὅτι ἡ μὲν φύσις εἴδους λόγον μόνον ἐπέχει, ἡ δὲ ὑπόστασις
καὶ τοῦ τινός ἐστι δηλωτική (ibid.).
367.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 90.
368.
Ibid., p. 97; D. Bathrellos, The Byzantine Christ: Person, Nature and Will
in the Christology of St Maximus the Confessor (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2004), pp. 110f.
Maximus the Confessor 95

turns his attention to reflection on creation and Christ, some aspects of

which have already been mentioned, and to which we shall return more
fully below.
From Maximus’ theology of creation, Zizioulas draws attention to
the fact that if God eternally willed the world, it did not exist from the
beginning, so it is not a necessary being. The world is created through the
Logos, and the logos of created beings are the free wills, not thoughts, of
God.369 Therefore, God as hypostasis creates particularity and communion
in non-necessity, and this through a hypostasis, that of the Logos. In the
incarnational event, the tropos hyparxeōs of Christ’s hypostasis bridges
the distance (diairesis) between divine and human nature and affirms the
difference/alterity(diaphora)370 betweenthem.371 Humannature,by receiving
divine hypostasis, is united with divine nature without confusion, indeed,
by receiving existence, according to a tropos unmarked by passions,
division and individualisation. Once again, it is hypostasis that affirms
what is particular and what is common. Even in the incorporation of the
human hypostasis into the hypostasis of Christ, it is precisely the latter
which, in its ontological relation to itself, brings the former into existence
as particularity.372
If, for Maximus, it is the hypostasis of the Logos that affirms the otherness
of human nature assumed in the Incarnation and of the embedded
hypostaseis,373 from this we get that ‘it is only a person that can express
communion and otherness simultaneously’.374 Therefore, for Maximus, as
for the Cappadocians, not only does hypostasis reveal the particular, and
ousia the general, but also hypostasis reveals both the particular, that is,

369.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 87. Zizioulas cites the Maximian
teaching that God knows creatures not according to nature but as idia
thelēmata (cf. ‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion
and Otherness, p. 218; Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 7
(PG 91, 1085AB).
370.
The term diaphora is also translated by Zizioulas as otherness (cf. ‘Vérité et
communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 95).
371.
We have seen how, according to Zizioulas, atomon indicates for Maximus
the individual being in relation to the process of division of nature resulting
from sin (cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 108).
372.
We have already mentioned above in the section, ‘The Logos Physeōs as
“Personalised Nature” ’, the question of Christ’s hypostasisation of human
hypostaseis or human natures.
373.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 29.
374.
Ibid.
96 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

what pertains to itself, and the general, that is, what pertains to ousia. In
this sense, hypostasis is a more ‘complex’ notion than ousia, as Moreschini
also confirms when he writes that:

hypostasis defines prosopon by means of its characteristic

features ([Opusc. 23] 261A). It is, in every sense, also nature,
just as the figure is body in every sense: for hypostasis cannot
be known without nature, just as figure or colour cannot be
known without the body; but nature is not hypostasis in every
sense, because nature has the logos of being, which is common
to all individuals, whereas hypostasis has, in addition, its own
logos of being, which belongs to it alone ([Opusc. 23] 264ΑΒ).
The hypostasis, therefore, in addition to possessing the logos
of the species, additionally ‘reveals someone’ (τοῦ τινός ἐστι
δηλωτική).375

Therefore, if we hold with the Cappadocians and Maximus that

particularity is connected with the hypostatic level and unity, and
what is common to that of substance,376 the ontological principle that
keeps together what is particular and what is common – the ‘principle
of unity’377 – is hypostasis.378 It is in the hypostasis of Christ that the
otherness of the created379 hypostasis is generated and the communion
between them and God is realised. Zizioulas writes that it is ‘via
personhood that two or more Others can unite. This is so because, with
the help of an insight borrowed from Maximus, natures can unite only
because they possess a hypostasis.’380 Following Zizioulas’ reasoning, the
unity between natures, divine and human, or between persons, Christ’s
divine and the human natures, has as its ontological principle the person
of Christ and is found to refer to what is common or general, that is, to
nature. Unity does not therefore concern interpersonal relations in such
a way as to exclude nature. The unity founded in the person concerns

375.
C. Moreschini, ‘La persona umana secondo Massimo il Confessore’, in
La teologia dal V all’VIII secolo fra sviluppo e crisi: XLI Incontro di studiosi
dell’antichità cristiana (Roma, 9–11 maggio 2013) (Rome: Institutum
Patristicum Augustinianum, 2014), pp. 697–716, at p. 700; my italics.
376.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, pp. 97, 105.
377.
‘On Being Other’, pp. 74–75.
378.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 97.
379.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 31.
380.
Ibid., p. 74.
Maximus the Confessor 97

nature, the latter understood as a reality that is not necessitated but

free. It is unity conceived as having its ontological principle in nature –
understood in the Neoplatonic manner – that affirms otherness as
ontological degradation rather than full ontological integrity, and as
necessitated ontological relation rather than communion.381
The question of freedom is thus raised again. Previously considered
in relation to nature, it is now considered in relation to the person.
According to Zizioulas, the Confessor pays great attention to the
question of freedom as a trait of the divine being and, with his reflection
on the ecstatic character of God, makes a significant contribution to
the understanding of the notion of person. Zizioulas first asks whether
otherness can have a meaning in ontology and whether ontology can
have a foundation other than that of ‘totality’.382 He receives a first
attempt at an answer from Maximus himself, by using the category of
ekstasis, taken from Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, but developed in
a more exhaustive way, since it is considered not only at the cosmological
level but also at the intra-trinitarian one.383
Maximus, in deference to the apophatic attitude of the Fathers, places
the being of God above affirmation and negation, above decision and
choice, insofar as it does not have to confront any datum. Christ is hyper
alētheian ‘because there exists nothing which may be examined beside
him and compared with him’.384 The non-necessity of divine being,
therefore, is not based on a freedom of choice in the face of any datum,
but on an ontological status, that is, on what Zizioulas calls ontological
freedom.385 This does not neglect or deny Athanasius’ attribution of
creation to God’s will, but the will is presented as pertaining to the
divine being characterised by the aforementioned ontological status and
not to the fallen being of creation.
The Maximian category that Zizioulas uses to express the notion of
ontological freedom, that is, the relational ontological status that is not
necessitated, is precisely that of ekstasis. How does Zizioulas judge the
use of this term in Maximus? Again, he recalls Maximus’ teaching that
‘difference’, dia-phora, becomes ‘division’, apo-stasis, in the fallen state
of existence. He identifies in the nouns in both terms, namely phora

381.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 90.
382.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 75.
383.
Cf. ibid.
384.
Ibid., p. 79; Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 37 (PG 91,
1296C).
385.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, pp. 109–10.
98 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

and stasis, the categories of the ontology of the person, which, however,
without the prefixes, i.e. in their neutral status, are inconceivable. Stasis,
‘being as one is’, is realised in the person as ek-stasis, communion, and as
hypo-stasis, particularity; with the Fall, ek-stasis and hypo-stasis become,
respectively, apo-stasis (separateness) and dia-stasis (individuality).
Similarly, phora, the movement of being outside oneself, manifests itself in
the person as dia-phora (difference, otherness) and ana-phora (movement
out of creation).386
In addition to what has been said, the Maximian notion of ekstasis, in its
specific use in reference to God, is also understood by Zizioulas in terms of
its close connection to that of erōs,387 a notion that indicates God’s coming
out of himself and attracting to himself in creation.388 In fact, according
to Maximus’ words, quoted by Zizioulas, God ‘is moved as He implants
an immanent relationship of eros and love in those who are capable of
receiving Him. He moves by naturally attracting the desire of those who
are moved towards Him.’389 In other words, God comes out of himself and
attracts to himself ‘as the ultimate destination of their desire those whose
desire he provokes’.390 As for Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, erōs is
understood precisely as this movement of Desire that finds ‘rest’ (stasis) in
the Other. It is a movement of ekstasis – explains Zizioulas – ‘in which the
vehemence of the motion is constantly intensified and does not stop until
the loving one “has become entire in the whole of the beloved one and is
embraced by the whole, willingly (ἑκουσίως) accepting in freedom (κατά
προαίρεσιν) the saving circumscription”’.391
Therefore, Zizioulas concludes that the Maximian notion of erōs
indicates the non-necessitated movement that characterises a particular
being and that ends with the ‘embrace’, which, being the union of ‘a

386.
Cf. ‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
pp. 229–30. Zizioulas specifies that it is ‘movement towards communion’
(ibid., p. 213).
387.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 77.
388.
Cf. ibid., p. 50.
389.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 79); Maximus the Confessor,
Ambiguorum Liber, 23 (PG 91, 1260C).
390.
‘On Being Other’, p. 50; cf. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum
Liber, 23 (PG 91, 1260C); Zizioulas also mentions Pseudo-Dionysius the
Areopagite, De Divinis Nominibus, IV.XIV (PG 3, 712AB)]. Erōs in this
sense is a definitive state of existence.
391.
‘On Being Other’, p. 72; Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 7
(PG 91, 1073D).
Maximus the Confessor 99

whole with a whole’, reveals the fact that the otherness thus brought
into being is an ontological integrity that is consequently not reducible
either to the original particularity or to what is general or common.
This affirms that the ekstasis of the Father, which generates otherness,
is configured as a movement of love towards the latter and in which it is
brought into being as ontological integrity.
On this basis, two important statements may be made with regard to
Zizioulas.
The first concerns the cause and purpose of the erotic movement,
which is the Other, not nature or love itself. As will be seen in the
following chapter, trinitarian existence is understood by the Fathers,
especially Nazianzen, not only from the point of view of personal cause
but also from that of personal purpose, showing how the two aspects are
intimately connected.392
The second concerns the concept of ‘subservience to nature’. By
this expression Zizioulas means the subjection of the particular to the
general,393 the ‘how’ a thing is to the ‘what’ a thing is. In this sense, ‘freedom
from nature’ indicates precisely the non-subjugation of the particular to
the general. Note that the general – nature – is not necessarily a negative
reality. In the case of post-lapsarian created nature, it is certainly marked
by necessity, even if it does not see the logos physeōs abolished in itself. In
such a case, submitting the particular to the general means submitting
the particular to the necessity of the general, which emerges with the
weakening of the logos physeōs. In the case of divine nature, it is not marked
by necessity; we have seen that, for the Cappadocians, for Maximus and
for Zizioulas, in God, person and nature coincide, insofar as they indicate
two aspects of the same reality, being. According to Zizioulas, ‘submitting
the particular to the general does not mean submitting the particular to
the necessity of nature – a reality that does not exist in God394 – but rather,
in Maximian terms, not reducing the tropos to ousia or, in other words,
the logos of being to the logos of substance’. The tropos is not without ousia
but, at the same time, it is ‘more’ than ousia, it is the ‘transcendence’ of

392.
This aspect of purpose is certainly less considered by Zizioulas than that of
cause, but not for this reason absent from his thinking, and, on the contrary,
not considered at all by Zizioulas’ critics when evaluating his proposal.
393.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 108.
394.
At times Zizioulas talks about the necessity of nature in reference to
God but, as he makes clear, hypothetically, understanding nature as not
hypostasised or conceived as archē of divine being (cf. ibid., p. 107).
100 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

ousia, or, in Zizioulan terms, it is the ontological principle of the existence/

mode of existence of ousia.
In this sense, generation and creation are seen as hypostatic-ecstatic
movements of communion and love in which, since the tropos is involved,
ousia is involved, ousia according to its tropos.395 In the ecstatic process
of personal derivation in the Trinity, ousia, as Zizioulas will be seen to
recognise, is involved, but not as an emanation. It does not produce an
emanation of ousia but a particularity:

The idea of ekstasis signifies that God is love, and as such he

creates an immanent relationship of love outside Himself. The
emphasis placed on the words ‘outside Himself’ is particularly
important, since it signifies that love as ekstasis gives rise not
to an emanation in the neoplatonic sense, but to an otherness
of being which is seen as responding and returning to its
original cause.396

There remains the problem of how to understand ontological

freedom in relation to hypostasis. The difference between generation
and creation lies in the fact that the former is not contingent, though not
involuntary, as will be seen in the next chapter; the latter, though rooted
in the relationship of love (agapētikē schesis)397 between the Father and
the Son, is contingent, subject to non-existence.398 In any case, the fact
that creation is rooted, for Maximus as well as for the Cappadocians,
in the relationship between the Father and the Son, leads one to think
that what qualifies the ontological status of creation is not the natural
or moral qualities, however much they are recognised as constitutive
aspects of a given being, but ‘a particular and unique relationship
(σχέσις) in which a certain “other” is singled out as uniquely Other’,399 a
relationship that makes it possible for the natural or moral qualities of
this ‘other’, insofar as they are personalised, to be unique. On this basis
uniqueness is understood in its inherentness in a personal otherness –
in Maximian terms, as Zizioulas notes, προσωπική διαφορά – which

395.
Cf. ‘Truth and Communion’, in Being as Communion, pp. 91–92.
396.
Ibid., p. 91.
397.
The expression is Maximian, as Zizioulas points out (cf. ibid., p. 80).
398.
To the objection: ‘what would God have been the Christian God if he had
not created?’, Zizioulas answers: ‘what would God have been the Christian
God if he could not avoid creating?’ (cf. «Χριστολογία καὶ Ὕπαρξη », p. 80).
399.
‘On Being Other’, p. 70.
Maximus the Confessor 101

derives, as we have just said, from a unique relation.400 One can therefore
understand how Zizioulas accepts the idea, promoted by Maximus,
according to which: ‘Adam rejected the Other as constitutive of his being
and declared himself to be the ultimate explanation of his existence’.401
Therefore, not nature, not the self, but the Other is the fundamental
ontological constitutive of a being’s existence, as Maximus argues, in
anthropology, with his reflection on the appearance of φιλαυτία, self-
love, and of pleasure (ἡδονή) and the passions that result with the Fall.402

400.
Cf. ibid.; Maximus the Confessor, Ep. 15 (PG 91, 553D). Zizioulas
emphasises the distinction between uniqueness and difference. The former
refers to the relationship of ontological constitution, the latter is inherent
in what is common between persons, to the natural or moral qualities that,
as such, form part of a universal.
401.
‘On Being Other’, p. 43, recalling Maximus the Confessor, Quaestiones
ad Thalassium de Scriptura, 62 (PG 90, 653A, 713A).
402.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 43; Maximus the Confessor, Ep. 2 (PG 91, 396D).
 Chapter Two

The Father, the Ontological Principle of

the Triune and One Being of God

Having studied Zizioulas’ understanding of the patristic usage of the

key terms ousia, hypostasis and tropos hyparxeōs, I turn in this chapter
to his reading of the scriptural, lex orandi and patristic data from which
he deduces the assumption of the Father’s monocausality in the Trinity.
Zizioulas holds that, although this assumption is already present in
Athanasius, it is only with the Cappadocians that it is clarified in an
ontological perspective free from subordinationist traits.

Data Learned from Scripture: God Is Father

Zizioulas refers, albeit very briefly, to the fact that Scripture tends to
identify the term ‘God’ with ‘Father’, an important fact for a biblically
nourished theology. Having said that, the question remains how to
understand this identification theologically: is it a primitive, undeveloped
stage in the understanding of dogma or, as Zizioulas believes, a capital
dogmatic datum?

Old Testament: God is the God of the Covenant, Absolutely

Transcendent, Free and Personal
With regard to Old Testament divine revelation, it should be noted that
Zizioulas does not address the question of the identification of God
with the Father. He limits himself to pointing out five characteristics of
Israel’s conception of God. First of all, God is characterised by absolute
Data Learned from Scripture 103

transcendence. God exists before the world and it is not possible to link
his existence to it.1 The second characteristic is absolute freedom. God
is not bound by any cosmic principle of justice or order.2 As a third
feature, the God of Israel is personal: he is the God of Abraham, Isaac
and Jacob, always related to humanity, in relation to which he defines
his identity as God the saviour.3 The fourth characteristic concerns his
revelation in history, centring on a covenant with a people.4 Finally, the
fift h characteristic concerns his revelation through the commandments.
Ultimately, knowledge of God emerges not primarily from observation
of the cosmos, but from God’s interaction with man and history.

New Testament. The God of Jesus Christ is the Father

Zizioulas observes that the expression ‘God the Father’ is very frequent
in the New Testament.5 Quoting Karl Rahner, he states that this is an
exegetically indisputable fact and means that ‘God’ indicates the ‘Father’.6
The question that arises is the following. Is this due to a still embryonic, if
not absent, theological understanding of God as Trinity in the Christian
communities from which the New Testament writings sprang, or to Jesus
himself because of a kenōsis that also involved the intellect, and therefore
knowledge of the divine mystery? Or are we in the presence of a relevant
dogmatic datum, indicating precisely the doctrine of the ontological
monarchy of the Father?7 The scriptural question must be set aside at
this point, since Zizioulas does not go into it further, except indirectly, in
relation to the lex orandi and patristics.

1.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 40–41.
2.
Cf. ibid., pp. 41–42.
3.
Cf. ibid., p. 42.
4.
The existence of the cosmos only reveals that there is a Creator (cf. ibid.).
5.
Zizioulas cites Galatians 1:3; Philippians 2:11; 1 Thessalonians 1:1; James
1:27; 1 Peter 1:2; 2 John 3; Jude 1 (cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 114).
6.
Cf. K. Rahner, The Trinity, trans. by J. Donceel (Cambridge: Burns &
Oates, 1970); K. Rahner, ‘Theos in the New Testament’, in K. Rahner,
Theological Investigations, Volume 1 (London: Darton, Longman & Todd,
1961), pp. 79–148; cf. also J. Galot, ‘Le mystère de la personne du Père’,
Gregorianum 77, no. 1 (1996), pp. 5–31.
7.
Even the hypothesis of a still very embryonic understanding of the
trinitarian mystery in the New Testament does not exclude that a more
developed understanding should not be based on the dogmatic datum of ho
Theos identified with the Father. In this regard, Koutloumousianos argues
that the Fathers introduced the attribution of the term ‘God’ to the divine
104 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics:

God as the Aitia of Trinitarian Being
Zizioulas starts from the consideration of the scriptural understanding
of the divine fatherhood in a trinitarian framework as formulated in
Matthew 28:19.8 The Sitz im Leben of the formulations expressing the
divine fatherhood in a trinitarian framework is liturgical, especially
baptismal. Zizioulas also observes that the idea of God as Father did not
arise from ‘abstract speculation’ about God, but from ‘ecclesial experience’
and within a trinitarian framework of reference.9 Thus, the focus shifts
from Scripture to the lex orandi and the patristic testimony. With
regard to the lex orandi, it may be observed how Zizioulas recognises,
particularly in the anaphoras of the liturgies of Basil and Chrysostom,
the reference of the term ‘God’ to the term ‘Father’ in the trinitarian
framework, and how he recognises a theological deepening of this datum
in the formulations of the Eastern Creeds. With regard to patristics,
Zizioulas reads the scriptural and liturgical data as the elaboration of a
precise trinitarian-patrocentric dogmatic understanding.

The Ancient Eucharistic Prayers and the Eastern Creeds:

One God, the Pantocrator Father
In relation to the lex orandi, Zizioulas notes that the ancient Eucharistic
prayers were addressed exclusively to the Father and comments as
follows:

If the one God is not a particular hypostasis, our prayer cannot

be addressed to the one God but only to the Trinity or to
the ‘Triunity’. But monotheism belongs to the lex orandi. In
praying to the Trinity, we must be praying at the same time

substance as a clearer way of safeguarding the oneness and Trinity of God,

suggesting that such an attribution constitutes an almost – so to speak –
pre-trinitarian formula (cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three,
p. 37). The point is that the data of the lex orandi and the Fathers do not at all
indicate an abandonment of the attribution of the term ‘God’ to the Father.
If anything, it is very appropriate to see how the attribution of the term
‘God’ to substance, to the Father, as well as to the Three, can be brought
back to a perspective of coherent understanding.
8.
‘Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.’
9.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 114.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 105

to the one God. If the one God is not a particular hypostasis,

the one God is left out of our prayer, since we can only pray to
a particular hypostasis and not to a ‘Triunity’ of some kind. It
is not accidental that all of the early eucharistic prayers were
addressed to the Father. The gradual introduction of the Trinity
into these prayers was never meant to obscure the truth that,
in praying to the Trinity, we are ultimately praying to the one
God, the Father.10

Zizioulas points to the testimony of the Eucharistic prayers of both

Basil and Chrysostom, which are addressed to the Father, presented as
the ‘only truly existing one’,11 and supports his thesis by appeal to some
specialised studies.12
For the moment I shall leave aside (until the section entitled ‘Intra-
trinitarian Taxis under the Sign of Meta and Syn’) a second aspect of the
lex orandi that Zizioulas considers, namely Basil’s doxology. For now I
shall consider how he sees in the Eastern Creeds a significant theological
deepening of the attribution of the term ‘God’ to the Father.
Zizioulas analyses the question of the idea of God the Father in
the ancient Creeds13 and begins his reflection by focusing on the
attribute present in the expression ‘God the Father almighty’, that is,

10.
Ibid., pp. 136–37.
11.
Cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», pp. 18, 22.
12.
J.A. Jungmann, Public Worship (London: Challoner Publications, 1957) and
P.F. Bradshaw, Essays on Early Eastern Eucharistic Prayers (Collegeville,
MN: The Liturgical Press, 1997) (cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 136–37).
Zizioulas points out that it was only under the influence of the Franco-
Gallican liturgy that some prayers addressed to Christ arose. In his view,
the anaphora is the prayer par excellence and those of the first centuries
had no doubt in addressing it only to the Father (cf. Lectures in Christian
Dogmatics, p. 68). This point is also recognised by one of his greatest
critics, J.-C. Larchet, who observes, however, that this is limited only to the
Eucharist, as Christ’s sacrifice offered to the Father, whereas other prayers
are in fact addressed to the Trinity, to Christ or to the divine nature (cf.
Larchet, Personne et nature, pp. 300–1). On Zizioulas’ conviction that the
prayer par excellence is the Eucharistic prayer and fully expresses the salvific
economy, that is, the work of Christ and the Church, and all that exists,
which will be offered to ‘God the Father’, see ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 137,
where Zizioulas cites 1 Corinthians 15:24 and Ephesians 2:18.
13.
See, for example, ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 113–18.
106 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

on ‘almighty’. Does this refer to ‘God’ or to the ‘Father’? If, as we have

seen, Zizioulas notes that the expression ‘God the Father’ is frequent in
the New Testament, he also points out that the expression ‘Almighty
Father’ is not present in either the New or the Old Testament.14 On the
other hand, the expressions ‘Almighty God’ or ‘Almighty Lord’ are
present in the Old Testament (in the Septuagint) and also in the New (cf.
2 Corinthians 6:18; Revelation 1:8; etc.). So why was the formula ‘God
the Father Almighty’ introduced? According to Zizioulas, it originated
under the influence of the Septuagint and probably as a response to
Gnosticism, which did not recognise the direct involvement of the
Father in creation. The expression ‘Almighty God’ therefore refers to
oikonomia, to God’s creative work, while the expression ‘God the Father’
refers to theologia, to God’s being in itself. In this regard, Zizioulas
quotes Cyril of Jerusalem who observes that the word ‘Father’ can only
be used improperly to indicate God’s relationship with humanity;15
indeed, Jesus’ distinction already mentioned between ‘my Father’ and
‘your Father’ is indicative of this.
In addition, Zizioulas highlights two aspects distinguishing the
Greek outlook from the Latin that further clarify the issue. The concept
of fatherhood can be apprehended according to an ontological or
moral content: the former is peculiar to the Greek Fathers and will be
examined later; the latter is more characteristic of the Latin Fathers.16
The concept of omnipotence is expressed in the Latin world by the
term omnipotens which indicates the power to act, potestas; in the
Greek world by the term παντοκράτωρ (and not παντοδύναμος) which
indicates the capacity to embrace, to contain, to establish relationships
of communion and love.17 Omnipotence is not a matter of potestas or
actus but of communio. Zizioulas cites Irenaeus, who refers to the Father

14.
Zizioulas cites in his support Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, pp. 132f.
15.
Cf. Cyril of Jerusalem, Catecheses 7.4f. (PG 33, 608f.); Athanasius,
Oratio contra Arianos II.32 (PG 26, 213f.); II.24–26 (PG 26, 197f.); III.66 (PG
26, 461f.); ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 114.
16.
For Augustine, God is God through power, Father through goodness (cf.
Augustine of Hippo, Sermo 213.1 [PL 38, 1060]). For Tertullian, God has
not always been Father (cf. Tertullian, Contra Hermogenem, III.4 [CChr.
SL 1, 399]) (cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 114). While it is true that the Latins
presented divine paternity in the sense that for Zizioulas is ‘moral’, this does
not mean that the ontological sense is absent in them.
17.
Cf. ibid., p. 116.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 107

as the one who ‘contains all things’,18 and Theophilus of Antioch, who
translates παντοκράτωρ as ‘all-embracing’.19
The most important aspect for Zizioulas is the difference between the
Western and the Eastern Creeds with regard to the presence, in the latter,
of the term ‘one’ – ἕνα – before the term ‘God’. The Western Creeds
read ‘Credo in deum patrem omnipotentem’, the Eastern, ‘Πιστεύομεν εἰς
ἕνα Θεὸν πατέρα παντοκράτωρα’. For the Son, the expression ‘one Lord
Jesus Christ’ is frequently used; for the Holy Spirit, ‘one Holy Spirit’.
According to Zizioulas, it is difficult to establish the reason for the
addition in the Eastern Creed of the term ‘ἕνα’ before the term ‘πατέρα’.
He is not convinced either by the hypothesis that the Eastern Creeds
are more theological than the Western ones, or by the hypothesis that
the former are more focused on God’s being and the latter on action
ad extra. In any case, according to Zizioulas, this fact cannot escape
the theologian. It is dense with dogmatic content, since it is read as an
attestation of the connection of divine unity to divine paternity.20 This
is confirmed by Kelly:

R [the Roman Creed] stands apart from later creeds because

of its failure to emphasize the oneness of God the Father. …
Almost without exception the Eastern practice is to assert
belief in one god the father almighty. … The main
exceptions to the latter point are the Egyptian creeds of Arius,
St Macarius and, possibly, of St Alexander of Alexandria; and
it is not surprising to find the Egyptian church reflecting
Roman liturgical oddities.21

Th is Eastern perspective would have been exposed to Arian

interpretations, according to Zizioulas, or Sabellian, according to
Kelly. They could be avoided, according to him, either by attributing
the expression ‘one God’ to the common substance or by deepening
the doctrine of the ontological monarchy of the Father, as the
Cappadocians did.

18.
Ibid.; ‘omnia continet’ (Irenaeus of Lyons, Adversus Haereses, II.I.5 [PG 7,
712B]).
19.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 116); τὰ πάντα … ἐμπεριέχει (Theophilus of
Antioch, Ad Autolycum, I.4 [PG 6, 1029B]).
20.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 117.
21.
Kelly, Early Christian Creeds, p. 195.
108 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Having said that, it is necessary to verify how Zizioulas reads the patristic
doctrine of the ontological monarchy of the Father. Before focusing on the
Cappadocians, the privileged sources of reference, we shall consider some
of Zizioulas’ reflections on Athanasius, whom he regards as linked to the
Cappadocians in a relationship of continuity within discontinuity.

Athanasius: The Father as Pēgē and Archē of the Trinity

Zizioulas does not overlook the fact that the idea of God as Father was
present both in classical Greek philosophy and in pre-Nicene and Nicene
theology, especially that of Athanasius.22
With the Nicene Creed it was made clear that the Father’s paternity
towards the Son is eternal and that it is this that grounds God’s
paternity towards the world. With Athanasius, the Father is understood
as the only principle of the Son, without the possibility of a principle prior
to the Father: not only sonship, as Zizioulas points out, but also paternity
belongs to the divine essence. In fact, in relation to the monarchy of the
Father, Athanasius uses the terms archē (principle or origin) and pēgē
(source), terms also present in the West but with a more impersonal
meaning, unlike the Cappadocians who introduce the term aitia (cause)
which, although derived from Neoplatonism, is profoundly redefined.23

22.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 113–18. Plato had already used the term
Father to indicate ‘the supreme being in whom everything has its origin’
(W. Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ (New York: Crossroad, 1988), p. 145;
Plato, Timaeus, 27d-29d); in Neoplatonism and Gnosticism, the Father
is ‘the supreme reality beyond being’ (Kasper, The God of Jesus Christ,
p. 145); in Stoicism, God as Father expresses ‘the unity of nature between
man and the world, the parental bond that binds all human beings together’
(ibid.). In the pre-Nicene period, the attribution of God as Father is linked
to the fact of creation, as in Clement of Rome (1 Clement, 19.2–3), to the
relationship between God and Jesus, as in Ignatius of Antioch (Epistle
to the Ephesians, 4). Justin connects the idea of God the Father with the
generation of the Son (Justin, Apology, II.6.3–5), therefore, the Creator is
the Father who generates the Logos but, as in Tertullian, it is clearly stated
that the Father has not always been the Father. The eternity of the Father’s
being, on the other hand, is affirmed by Origen (Origen, In Ioannem,
II.2.17–18), but with a subordinationist emphasis. Only the Father is ‘God
in himself’ (αὐτόθεος), the Son and the Holy Spirit being God insofar as
divinity is communicated to them by the one who is God in himself.
23.
‘One Single Source: An Orthodox Response to the Clarification on the
Filioque’, in The One and the Many, pp. 41–45, at p. 42.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 109

Athanasius’ belief, in line with Nicaea, that the Son was begotten from
the substance of the Father and not simply from the Father, in Zizioulas’
view, is due both to a certain substantialist approach and to the need to
distinguish between creation and the eternal generation of the Son. It may be
asked, however, whether the simple equation Athanasius  substantialist
(and Cappadocians  personalist) is not too schematic. G.L. Prestige, for
example, believes that for Athanasius, as for Nicaea, the formulation
of the generation of the Son ‘from the substance of the Father’, which
aimed at protecting the consubstantiality of the Son with the Father, is
exactly equivalent to the affirmation of the generation ‘from the Father’,24
for when the emanationist interpretation of an ousia that divides or
precedes the persons is excluded, it becomes difficult to distinguish the
generation ‘from the Father’ from the generation ‘from the substance
of the Father’. As we shall see, for Zizioulas the expression preferred by
the Cappadocians, namely ‘from the Father’, is a development of the
personalist perspective. Nevertheless, the maintenance of the connection
between ousia and generation, if this does not imply the affirmation of
the priority of an impersonal substance over hypostaseis, has the merit of
showing how the substantivist level is integrated into the personalist one.
This again is the view of Prestige, who writes in relation to Athanasius:
‘He [the Son] thus belongs to the ousia of the Father and is offspring out
of it. … The Son is a presentation of the divine substance by derivation
and in real distinction.’25 Generation from the ousia of the Father does
not necessarily undermine the understanding of the derivation of the
Son, or of the Holy Spirit, as a process of personal distinction, nor does
it attribute a causative role to the ousia. In Athanasius the generation of
the Son from the Father’s ousia is the product of the Father’s will. It can
therefore be assumed that the doctrine of the monarchy of the Father,
albeit within a framework of understanding still marked by a certain
substantialism, is already present in Athanasius.

Basil of Caesarea: The Father, the One who gives to

Another the ‘Archē tou Einai’
Zizioulas points out first that the framework of dogmatic history in which
the Cappadocians, and Basil in primis, are inserted is characterised, on
the one hand, by the Athanasian heritage (i.e. the affirmation of the
relational character of substance) and, on the other, by the challenge
posed by Sabellius, with his postulation of a single prosōpon (‘person’

24.
Cf. Prestige, God in Patristic Thought, p. 195.
25.
Ibid., pp. 217–18.
110 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

or ‘role’) in God,26 and also by Eunomius with his identification of the

ingenerate Father with the divine nature, with the consequent exclusion
of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Godhead.27
With regard to the question of the ontological monarchy of the Father,
Zizioulas concentrates more on Nazianzen, since among the Cappadocians
he is the one who has most developed a reflection on this aspect,28 but he
also cites the teaching of Basil of Caesarea. In De Spiritu Sancto, Basil
concentrates on the question of the consubstantiality of the Three, through
the ‘personalist’ register of co-glorification, while in Contra Eunomium he
deepens the assumption of the causality of the Father in the trinitarian
existence. The Basilian testimony is, moreover, of great importance, since
it is undeniable that the bishop of Caesarea was responsible for setting
the general direction of the theological line followed by Nazianzen and
Nyssen.29

The Unity of God in Relation to Ousia

Zizioulas acknowledges that the Cappadocians understood the
substance of God with reference to divine unity.30 It is therefore difficult
to conclude that he does not recognise in the Fathers any place for nature
or that he attributes to it a negative meaning, theorising a separation
or dialectical relationship between person and nature in God. The

26.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 156–59.
27.
Cf. ‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 11.
28.
Zizioulas explicitly states that he refers in particular to Nazianzen (cf.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 131). It is difficult to agree with Najib Awad when
he states without further argument that it is Basil who emphasises the
monarchy of the Father, in opposition to Nazianzen, who instead follows
Athanasius in attesting to the centrality of the doctrine of homoousion (cf.
N.G. Awad, ‘Between Subordination and Koinonia: Toward a New Reading
of the Cappadocian Theology’, Modern Theology 23, no. 2 [2007], pp. 181–
204).
29.
Cf. for example, Milano, Persona in teologia, p. 125.
30.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 118. A few years prior to this writing, he had
expressed himself in a somewhat misleading way: ‘If we speak of the one
God as the one ousia that is shared by three persons, we make the Trinity
logically secondary from an ontological point of view’ (‘The Doctrine of
God the Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 10). As will be seen, the
Cappadocians do speak of the unity/oneness of God with reference to the
one substance, but, as Zizioulas points out in ‘The Father as Cause’, on the
basis of the monarchy of the Father.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 111

point is that, according to Zizioulas, the Cappadocians insisted on the

Father, rather than the divine ousia, as the principle/cause (archē/aitia)
of the trinitarian existence,31 and for this reason he does not go on to
cite patristic statements on substance in relation to divine unity. Basil
first emphasises the connection between ousia – also expressed by the
term ‘divinity’ (theotēs) – and divine unity. He expresses himself as
follows: ‘in the confession of the one Godhead in everything and for
everything unity is safeguarded’,32 since faith teaches us ‘distinction in
hypostasis and union in ousia … the concept of commonality refers to
ousia’.33 However, unity is also described, in a second move, in terms of
the equality of the divine persons and their mutual indwelling: ‘The Son
is in the Father, the Father is in the Son; since the latter is such as the
former is, and the former is such as the latter is, and in this their unity
lies.’34 A first fundamental datum is therefore that, if the unity of God
is referred to ousia, the substantialist and personalist registers are so
deeply connected that they presuppose each other.

31.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 119. Note Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto,
18.45 (PG 32, 149BC) and Fr Chrysostomos Koutloumousianos’ comments
on it (Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three, p. 27). Basil refers unity
to the koinon tēs physeōs, yet it is not so clear that he traces the monarchy
of the Father back to nature. In worshipping the God from God (process
of derivation), we confess the proper character of hypostaseis (distinction
and taxis) and remain faithful to the monarchy. The latter can mean either
consubstantiality (the hypostaseis, although derived, are consubstantial) or
the principiality of the Father (in the process of derivation the monarchy
is affirmed to be of the Father). The latter reading seems more likely than
the former. In this sense it is the monarchy of the Father that grounds
consubstantiality, the being one of the Father and the Son kata to koinon tēs
physeōs. Note that the accusative with κατὰ indicates conformity (‘according
to’, ‘in accordance with’), not agency (‘by means of’/‘by virtue of’) as in the
case of διὰ. The Father and the Son are said to be ‘one’ according to identity
of substance, not in virtue of it.
32.
[Ὥ]στε δι᾽ὅλου καὶ τὴν ἑνότητα σώζεσθαι ἐν τῇ τῆς μιᾶς θεότητος ὁμολογία
(Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 236.6 [PG 32, 884B]).
33.
[T]ὸ κεχωρισμένον ἐν ὑποστάσει καὶ τὸ συνημμένον ἐν τῇ οὐσία … ὁ μὲν
τῆς κοινότητος λόγος εἰς τὴν οὐσίαν ἀνάγεται (Basil of Caesarea, Ep.
38.5 [PG 32, 336BC]).
34.
Υἱὸς γάρ ἐν τῷ Πατρὶ, καὶ Πατὴρ ἐν Υἱῷ, ἐπειδὴ καὶ οὗτος τοιοῦτος, οἶος
ἐκεῖνος, κἀκεῖνος οἶοσπερ οὗτος, καὶ ἐν τούτῳ τὸ ἕν (Basil of Caesarea,
De Spiritu Sancto, 18.45 [PG 32, 149B]). As we have seen, Basil continues:
112 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

The Father as Agennētos

Zizioulas points out that for Basil the hypostatic property, therefore
the sole and exclusive property of the Father, is indicated by the term
ingenerate, agennētos. However, he does not dwell on the meaning it
takes. Since the concept of ungenerativeness is very recurrent in the
Fathers, perhaps more so than Zizioulas points out, we need to examine
the fundamental sense that Basil attributes to this term.
First it should be noted that, in reference to the hypostatic property of
the Father, Basil uses, in addition to the term ‘ingenerate’, the terms ‘being
Father’ or ‘paternity’. In the first case, Basil expresses himself as follows:
‘The God who is all alone has as a distinctive sign of his hypostasis being
Father and not having derived being from any cause.’35 As we can see,
Basil is reluctant to limit the identification of the hypostatic property of
the Father as ‘ingenerate’, since this term is not biblical and, moreover,
is central to Eunomius’ teaching, in accordance with which, as Zizioulas
repeatedly points out, it coincides with the divine nature, with the result
that both the Son and the Holy Spirit are excluded from it. Basil writes that
Eunomius, wishing to demonstrate that the Son is unlike the Father, is
silent on the names of Father and Son, and concentrates only on the terms
‘begotten’ and ‘generated’.36 Basil in Contra Eunomium sometimes prefers
the term ‘paternity’ to ‘ungenerated’, as ‘paternity’ is more biblical, since
it refers to the term ‘Father’ and expresses a relational character, referring
as it does to the term ‘Son’. So, if the hypostatic property designates the
way in which hypostasis exists, it is affirmed for the Father both to exist
without cause and to exist by generating.
At other times, Basil (and, even more so, Nazianzen) strongly
emphasises the indivisibility of the Father, more than Zizioulas is prepared
to do, and does so with regard to his understanding of the divinity of the

‘according to the property of persons, they are one and one, but according
to koinon tēs physeōs, both are one’ – Ὥστε κατὰ μὲν τὴν ἰδιότητα τῶν
προσώπων εἷς καὶ εἷς, κατὰ δὲ τὸ κοινὸν τῆς φύσεως ἓν οἰ ἀμφότεροι (ibid.
[PG 32, 149BC]). For the meaning of the expression koinōnia kata physin,
see chapter one, section ‘Ousia: What Is Common to the Three as Koinonia/
Koinōnia kata Physin’ above.
35.
Ὁ δὲ ἐπὶ πάντων Θεὸς ἐξαίρετόν τι γνώρισμα τῆς ἑαυτοῦ ὑποστάσεως,
τὸ Πατὴρ εἶναι, καὶ ἐκ μηδεμιᾶς αἰτίας ὑποστῆναι, μόνος ἔχει (Basil of
Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 [PG 32, 329D-32A]; cf. Contra Eunomium, I.15 [PG 29,
545B]).
36.
Cf. ibid., I.18 (PG 29, 553AB).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 113

Son and the Holy Spirit.37 Basil strongly emphasises that the Father is such
in that he has the Son and that a division or separation between them,
as well as between the Holy Spirit and the Son, is unthinkable.38 This is
affirmed by Basil when he comments on the expressions ‘splendour of
glory’ and ‘imprint of the hypostasis’ of Hebrews 1:3 in relation to the
Son’s hypostasis and wants to justify his choice of not using the term
hypostasis but imprint of another hypostasis, that of the Father. He writes:

If in fact hypostasis is the sign that identifies each existence,

it would be admitted that the property of the Father is
to exist ingenerately, and that the Son takes on a form in
accordance with the properties of the Father: then it would
no longer remain an exclusive characteristic of the Father
alone to be called ingenerate, since the existence of the Son
is also characterized by the individualizing property of the
Father.39

Basil states clearly that ‘the property of the Father is to exist ingenerately’
and that ‘the existence of the Son is characterized by the individualizing
property of the Father’, that is ‘to exist ingenerately’. He explains, in
the continuation of the text, that he does not intend to affirm that the
Son, like the Father, is/becomes ingenerate, since there is no confusion
between the hypostatic properties of the two (so that not even the Father
can be said to be generated like the Son),40 but that the Son is not separate
from the existence of the Father, understood here as ingenerateness, just
as what derives from its cause is inconceivable separately from it. The
existence of the Son is characterised by the ingenerate existence of the
Father and at the same time also by the generating existence of the Father.
In another passage Basil further clarifies this concept: ‘But the Father is

37.
See for example L.F. Mateo-Seco, ‘The Paternity of the Father and the
Procession of the Holy Spirit: Some Historical Remarks on the Ecumenical
Problem’, in Maspero and Wozniak (eds), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology,
pp. 69–102, here at p. 83.
38.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 (PG 32, 332C).
39.
Ibid., Ep. 6 (PG 32, 337A). In this letter the fact that the Son is called ‘imprint
of the substance’ does not mean that he is not a hypostasis (literally: in a
hypostasis), so much as the fact that a separation between the Father and the
Son cannot be admitted.
40.
Nor should it be thought that the ingenerateness spoken of indicates the
eternal existence of the Son, which for Basil is out of the question.
114 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

from eternity, he says: then the Son is also from eternity, united through
generation to the ingenerate condition of the Father’.41 Here, it is specified
that the Son’s existence is ‘united’ to the ingenerate existence of the Father
and is therefore ‘characterized’ by it. Basil does not go so far as to specify
the meaning of this characterisation; Nazianzen will attempt such an
arduous task. In any case, if Basil does not explain the meaning of this
union with the ingenerate condition – an aspect that Zizioulas does not
consider – the affirmation of personal causation in terms of union, and
therefore of relationship and communion, to which the ingenerate Father
gives rise, is present and for Zizioulas constitutes a significant element.42
Given this, is it possible to understand the terms ‘ingenerate’ and
‘paternity’ in a unified way? Zizioulas seems to be aware of the close
connection between them; in fact, when he talks about the hypostatic
property of the Father, as for example in ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, on one
page he first uses the term ‘ingenerate’, then ‘generator’ and finally
‘ingenerate generator’.43 However, like Basil, he gives greater prominence
to the term ‘paternity’, since it is this that is connected with the trinitarian
taxis, i.e. with the hypostatic derivation of the Son and the Holy Spirit
from the Father.44 Furthermore, if it affirms decisively the Father’s non-
necessity in generating, and that this non-necessity consists in the fact
that the Father does not have to compare himself with anything given,
this ‘nothing given’ is not relative to the Father’s ingenerate state, since
it affirms that the Son also does not have to compare himself with the
Father as a datum prior to his existence. The non-necessity is linked

41.
Ἀλλ᾽ἐξ ἀϊδίου, φησὶν, ὁ Πατήρ· ἐξ ἀϊδίου τοίνυν καὶ ὁ Υἱὸς, γεννητῶς
τῇ ἀγεννησίᾳ τοῦ Πατρὸς συναπτόμενος (Basil of Caesarea, Contra
Eunomium, II.17 [PG 29, 605C]; my italics).
42.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 35.
43.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203. Zizioulas observes that for the
Cappadocians, as for Athanasius, ‘person’ and ‘hypostatic property’ are not
to be confused: ‘Father’ indicates the person, ‘ingenerate’ the hypostatic
property of the person. In this regard, Zizioulas quotes Athanasius when
he observes that one does not pray to the unoriginate, but to the Father
(cf. Athanasius, Oratio contra Arianos I.34 [PG 26, 81–84]; ‘Trinitarian
Freedom’, p. 204).
44.
Cf. ibid., p. 203. Prestige asserts that the hypostatic property indicates ‘the
process by which each Person comes to have His being imparted’, and also
the tropos hyparxeōs of each divine hypostasis (cf. Prestige, God in Patristic
Thought, pp. 246–47).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 115

to paternity, and therefore to relationality as a constitutive note of the

Father’s being, and not to indivisibility.45

The Father, the One Who Gives to Another the ‘Archē tou Einai’
We now turn to the question of the ontological principiality of the Father
in the Trinity. Zizioulas has repeatedly stated that the introduction into
Christian theology of the term aition (‘causative principle’) or aitia
(‘cause’), in addition to archē (‘principle’ or ‘origin’),46 is the work of
the Cappadocians, beginning with Basil. The term had already been
used with reference to God by Plato when in his discussion of first and
second causes he spoke of God as a cup overflowing with love and will.47
However, it was only with the Cappadocians that it was applied to the
person of the Father and was no longer understood in an impersonal
sense and thus in relation to necessity.
For Basil it is axiomatic that everything in God begins according
to the goodwill (εὐδοκία) of the Father.48 This blessing relates not
only to the economic Trinity but also to the immanent Trinity and

45.
‘God is not a logically “necessary being”. His being is constituted freely
thanks to its being caused by a person, the Father’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 36).
As we can see, what is called into question is the Father’s paternity, not his
underivatedness.
46.
The difference in meaning between the two terms will be seen more clearly
in Gregory of Nazianzus. For now, it is sufficient to bear in mind what
Zizioulas briefly observes: aitia, more than archē, suggests a more personal
interpretation of its meaning (cf. ‘One Single Source’, p. 42).
47.
[K]ρατήρ τις ὑπεῤῥύη (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 [PG 36, 76C];
Plato, Timaeus, p. 41D; ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 119–20). This image is
also taken up in Plotinus, Enneads, VI.1.6.
48.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 16.38 (PG 32, 136–40); ‘The
Father as Cause’, p. 121. Basil in this passage does not expressly speak of
εὐδοκία of the Father, but he does speak of the Father as the ‘first cause’
(προκαταρκτικὴν αἰτίαν) of beings, as well as ‘a principle’ (ἀρχὴ μία) of beings,
which works through the Son and perfects in the Holy Spirit. Observe then
how, at the level of creation, the Three are the cause of the existence of what
exists, and the Father is the first cause. If being first cause is the prerogative
of the Father, the causality of the Son and the Holy Spirit in creation are
derived from the Father: ‘ “What is yours is mine”, as if to say that from the
Father comes creative causality’ – Τὰ ἐμὰ πάντα σά ἐστιν, ὡς ἐπ᾽αὐτὸν τῆς
ἀρχῆς τῶν δημιουργημάτων ἀναγομένης (Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu
Sancto, 8.19 [PG 32, 104A]). It will be seen that Zizioulas shows how, at the
116 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

consists in giving the Son and the Holy Spirit the principle of being.
Zizioulas writes, quoting Basil: ‘For Father is the one who has given the
beginning of being (archē tou einai) to the others. … Son is the one who
has had the beginning of his being (archē tou einai) by birth from the
other.’49 Furthermore, Basil affirms that the Father not only gives the
‘principle’ of being, but that he is this principle, combining this term,
as its synonym, with that of ‘cause’. Basil writes: ‘Because the Father is
the principle of the Son, the Father is greater as the cause and principle
of the Son.’50 It is in this sense that the statements about the Son coming
from the Father51 and the Spirit having his being (einai) from the Father
are to be understood.52 ‘Coming from’ and ‘having being from’ mean

intra-divine level, the Father makes the Son constitutive of the Trinity’s
being. Therefore, the expression ‘first cause’ should not make one think,
at the intra-trinitarian level, of several causes, since the only cause is the
Father. Basil speaks, moreover, of the principle that is the Father, inasmuch
as he ‘wills’ (θέλει) to create through the Son, and of the Son who, working
in the likeness of the Father, ‘wills’ (θέλει) to perfect the work through the
Holy Spirit.
49.
‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 131–32; cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium,
II.22 (PG 29, 621B). The original Basilian text sounds slightly different but
means the same: ‘He is Father who gives to another the principle of being
according to a nature similar to his own; he is Son who has had from another
the principle of being by means of generation’ – Πατὴρ μὲν γάρ ἐστιν ὁ εἶναι
κατὰ τὴν ὁμοίαν ἑαυτῷ φύσιν τὴν ἀρχὴν παρασχών. Υἱὸς δὲ ὁ ἐξ ἑτέρου
γεννητῶς τοῦ εἶναι τὴν ἑσχηκώς (ibid.). The verb παρέχω can be translated
as offering, procuring, providing or, more simply, giving.
50.
Ἐπειδὴ γὰρ ἀπὸ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἡ ἀρχὴ τῷ Υἱῷ, κατὰ τοῦτο μείζων ὁ Πατὴρ,
ὡς αἴτιος καὶ ἀρχή (ibid., I.25 [PG 29, 568B]). Since causality refers to the
way God is, and substance to the what, and since apophaticism is eminently
concerned with the latter (although we have seen how Zizioulas places limits
on cataphaticity in relation also to the how, i.e. the person), in the light of what
we have begun to see, the following statement by Koutloumousianos sounds
odd: ‘Causality itself in divinity is impalpable and unknown; it furnishes
the distinction between the hypostatic properties, only to ensure that no
kind of priority is acceptable within the Deity’ (Koutloumousianos, The
One and the Three, p. 28).
51.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, I.18 (PG 29, 553B).
52.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 (PG 32, 329C); ‘The Father as Cause’,
p. 130. Zizioulas notes Basil’s reluctance to use the expression ‘by the ousia
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 117

having the Father as the ontological principle of one’s own being, an

assumption that leads Zizioulas to conclude that for Basil the Father is
the cause of trinitarian existence.53
Zizioulas then draws attention to the fact that, given the relationality
of the divine names, the causality of the Father is understood by Basil
not as an overflow of goodness, in the Platonic manner, but precisely
as an establishment of relationship (schesis) that generates unique
particularities.54 Therefore, caution is needed in affirming or denying
that the Father alone is the cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit.55 Yet,
on the basis of the relational character of the person, Zizioulas concludes
that, from Basil onwards, the being of God was identified with the
person, since the principle of the being of a particularity is a person,
and this being, which is such insofar as it is constituted by this principle,
is a person.56 Zizioulas in fact emphasises that the personal derivation
concerns the relation, understood in an ontological sense. On this basis,
Zizioulas concludes that: ‘it is important to avoid saying that the Father
gives his ousia to the Son and the Spirit, as if he were by himself its

of the Father’, since, in his opinion, this had only an anti-Arian function
(see below, the section titled ‘Intra-Trinitarian taxis under the badge of meta
and syn’).
53.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 196; Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 361 (PG 32, 1100–
1); 362 (PG 32, 1101–4); Contra Eunomium, I.14–15 (PG 29, 544–48). Also, on
the anthropological level, Basil argues that the principle of man’s existence
cannot be a bare substance (cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 235 (PG 32, 872–
76); Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 52), nor a substance that is above,
nor a substance that is below (cf. Communion and Otherness, pp. 105–6),
but Adam, who, however, because of his creatureliness and death, could not
fulfi l this task (cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 [PG 32, 329–33]; ‘On Being
a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 106). Zizioulas notes the biblical
imprint of this ontological statement.
54.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, II.9–10 (PG 29, 587B-92A).
55.
Cf. Awad, ‘Between Subordination and Koinonia’. For such theologians, the
Basilian affirmation of causality must be referred to the ‘Father alone’. If it
indicates the Father as a particular being established prior to the relationship
with the Son and the Holy Spirit – as Zizioulas seems to affirm – it causes
perplexity. As we shall see shortly, the Father is the co-glorified with the
other two divine persons and, as such, is the cause of these.
56.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, pp. 88–89 (Being as Communion, pp. 40–41).
118 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

original possessor, or as if the ousia existed somehow prior to the persons

and was imparted to them by the Father, the original possessor’.57

The Principiality of the Father at the level of Hypostasis

An aspect on which Zizioulas insists is the fact that the Father is the
principle not of the ‘what’ but of the ‘how’ God is, i.e. not of the divine
nature, but of the hypostasis/personality of the Son and the Holy Spirit,
as well as of his own.58 The personal derivation of the Son (and the Holy
Spirit) from the Father is clearly supported by Basil. He affirms that
‘the Son derives from the Father’.59 The derivation is of the person from
the person or of the being of the person from the person as is attested by the
following words, according to which the distinctive sign of the Son and
of the Holy Spirit according to hypostasis is to derive their being from the
Father:

Therefore, since the Holy Spirit, from whom the provision of

every good gushes forth for the whole of creation, depends
upon the Son, with whom he is inseparably comprehended,
he has his being dependent on the Father, who is his cause,
and from whom he also proceeds. This is the distinguishing
mark of his hypostatic individuality, that he is known after
the Son and together with him and derives his being from the
Father.60

Zizioulas reads in Basil a clear affirmation of the derivation of the

being of the Son and of the Holy Spirit from the person of the Father,
since the latter is the cause of the being of the person of both the Son and
the Holy Spirit. On this basis he makes it clear that this causality of the
Father, as well as taking place before time and outside of time, without
thus implying any subordination, relates to the hypostatic level and not
the level of ousia. The Basilian distinction between absolute and relative
names shows that only the latter – Father, Son, Holy Spirit – express the
personal derivation of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father as
their cause. If the distinction between the Three is not substantial but

57.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 129, n. 52. We shall see below how, with Basil (cf.
Homily 24.4 [PG 31, 605B]), we can support this thesis.
58.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, I.14–15 (PG 29, 544–48); ‘The
Father as Cause’, pp. 119, 128.
59.
Ἐκ γὰρ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὁ Υἱὸς (Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 [PG 32, 329C]).
60.
Ibid.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 119

hypostatic,61 from the point of view of substance any distinction between

them is rejected, but the full divinity of each is affirmed.62 Therefore,
on the basis of the ontological nature of hypostasis recognised by Basil,
Zizioulas concludes, with reference to these, that without difference
(διαφορά) there is no being.63
The most delicate aspect of this issue is that Zizioulas closely identifies
the causality of the Father with the personal distinction between the
Three. It is not by chance that the Father is called the ‘ultimate ontological
principle of divine personhood’.64 In order to avoid interpretations of a
divine ousia previously possessed by the Father and ‘then’ transmitted to
the Son and the Holy Spirit, Zizioulas rejects the idea of a transmission
of ousia in personal derivation and limits personal derivation to what
distinguishes the Three.
On the other hand, if without difference there is no being, then ousia
also expresses being.65 In this connection it will be seen that for Basil, as
for Nazianzen and Nyssen, substance is involved in the causative process
of the Father, and for this reason is not subject to the process of division
and therefore to necessity; just as it will be seen that Zizioulas also
recognises an involvement of ousia in the process of personal derivation.

The Father, Principle of the Godhead

The principiality of the Father, referring to the hypostatic/personal
aspect, is appreciated more fully within the framework of the affirmation
of the Father as archē of consubstantial particularity. While stating
that ‘Basil clearly understands archē in the ontological sense of the
beginning of being’,66 Zizioulas also emphasises that the Father gives
to another the principle of being according to a nature similar to his
own.67 This is an important point, since it implies that the principle of

61.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, II.9 (PG 29, 589A).
62.
The fact that for the Holy Spirit Basil is reticent to employ homoousion is a
negligible issue here (cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 182).
63.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, I.19 (PG 29, 556B); ‘On Being
Other’, p. 22.
64.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 130. The term ‘ultimate’ means also ‘fundamental’,
‘primary’.
65.
As will be seen in the following chapters, by ‘difference’ he means an
otherness that expresses communion and the common.
66.
Ibid., p. 131.
67.
Cf. ibid., pp. 131–32. Zizioulas leaves out the question of certain Basilian
statements that can be interpreted in a homoiousian sense.
120 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

divine being, proper only to the Father, is inseparably connected with

consubstantiality and represents its guarantee. On this basis we arrive
at the possibility of understanding the Father as the One God, not as the
principle of divine nature, but as the principle of the Son’s being (archē
tou einai).68 However, if the Father does not give the Son the substance,
but the principle of being, the Nicene expression of the generation of
the Son ‘from the nature of the Father’ is maintained, and perhaps not
only as an anti-Arian function, unlike Zizioulas who instead insists
on supporting the thesis of a total replacement of the above expression
with that formulated by the Cappadocians, namely ‘from the Father’.
Basil writes:

When I say a single essence, one must not of course think that
they are two distinct entities coming from a single entity; one
must think instead that there is a subsistent Son who comes
from the principle that is the Father, not that the Father and
the Son derive from a superior essence … there is identity
of essence in that the Son comes from the Father, not made
mechanically but generated by his nature.69

In this passage, generation from the Father’s nature is clearly

presented in opposition to necessity, since it is said that the Son was not
made ‘mechanically’, and is connected, together with generation from
the Father, with identity of essence. Thus, the Father generates insofar
as he generates from ‘his nature’, which is not prior to him or possessed
prior to and exclusively at generation, and is not marked by necessity
since neither the being of the Father nor that of the Son is necessitated.
In this way nature, although it does not cause generation, and therefore
the person, is involved in generation, that is, in the definition of the
consubstantial otherness of the Son.
Having clarified this, it is possible to understand more fully how for
Basil the Father is the ontological principle of being, inasmuch as he is
the principle of the being of consubstantial persons: a dogmatic aspect
repeatedly reiterated by Zizioulas. Observe what Basil writes: ‘The Son
exists coming from the Father by way of generation and represents in
himself the Father by nature … insofar as he is generated by him, he

68.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 131–32; Basil of Caesarea, Contra
Eunomium, II.22 (PG 29, 621B).
69.
Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 (PG 31, 605B).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 121

preserves consubstantiality.’70 As we can see, the consubstantiality of

the Son with the Father, or rather the divinity of the Son, is rooted in
the principiality of the Father. From this Zizioulas deduces that the
principiality of being, attributed only to the Father, does not harm,
indeed guarantees consubstantiality,71 and that it is consubstantiality
that depends on the hypostatic derivation of the Son and the Holy
Spirit from the Father, and not vice versa.72 Basil clearly states that
from the Father, as the principle of the being of the Son and the Holy
Spirit, follows the fullness of their divinity. Consider, for example, this
passage:

For there is the Father, who possesses perfect being, who

needs nothing, the root and source of the Son and the Holy
Spirit; there is the Son, the Word who lives in the fullness of
divinity, the product of the Father, who needs nothing; there
is also, in his completeness, the Spirit, who is not a part of
another, but is considered perfect and whole in himself.73

Basil affirms here that the Father is the root and source of the Son and
the Holy Spirit and that he possesses perfect being, but not by himself,
that is, not insofar as he is considered separately from the Son and the
Holy Spirit, but precisely insofar as he is the root and source of their
existence. Now, if the ontological principle of the being of the Son and
the Holy Spirit is a particular being who possesses perfect being – in the
sense, therefore, of generative, relational being – the Son and the Holy
Spirit are in the fullness of divinity, in the sense of such perfect being,
whose perfection is also expressed as non-necessity.
From this Zizioulas deduces that, if the Father is the only principle
of God’s being, of the fullness of Godhead, he can be understood
as the One God.74 As Zizioulas acknowledges, Basil admits that

70.
Ibid. (PG 31, 608A). A similar concept is also expressed by Basil with regard
to the affirmation of the glory to be understood as a synonym of the divinity
of the Father that shines complete and whole in the Son, because of his
consubstantial otherness; cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, II,
17–18 (PG 29, 605–12).
71.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 139.
72.
‘[I]t is otherness that constitutes sameness [/what is common], not the
reverse’ (‘Person and Nature’, p. 90).
73.
Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 (PG 31, 609B).
74.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 137.
122 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the oneness of God is discernible in the one nature. In this regard,

the following words of the bishop of Caesarea could be taken as an
example: ‘God is, therefore, One, since through both75 [the Father and
the Son] one aspect is observed that is fully manifested in both’,76
referring to the divine nature. However, as Zizioulas explains, the
ontological principle of God’s being One is the Father. Indeed, Basil
continues: ‘There are not two gods: for there are not two Fathers.
He who introduces two principles affi rms two gods.’ 77 From this
we see that the notion of One God is linked to the oneness of the
principiality of divine being, which is proper only to the Father: ‘the
one ontological archē in the Trinity is the Father, who is in this sense
the One God’.78 In this case, it is possible to add with Basil that this
principiality justifies the affi rmation of the Th ree being one God in
terms of a single ousia; of the identity that the Father has with the
Son and the Holy Spirit – ‘they are not two gods, since the Son has
identity with the Father’ 79 – and of union – ‘where there is a principle
and one who proceeds from him, as archetype and image, the internal
reason for the union is not undermined’.80 Ultimately, we have that
the Father as the sole ontological principle of God is God One, such
that God is One in nature (‘God as a person – the hypostasis of the
Father – makes the divine substance what it is: the One God’)81 and
in the unity of the Th ree.

75.
Here, Basil is speaking with reference to the Father and the Son, but this
does not detract from the fact that the same applies to the Holy Spirit.
76.
Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 (PG 31, 608C).
77.
Ibid. (PG 31, 605C). In the same text Basil writes that ‘One is God and Father,
one is God and Son are not two gods, since the Son has identity with the
Father’ (PG 31, 605B). From this it might seem that the oneness of God is
linked to identity of essence, but immediately afterwards Basil points out that
‘there is identity of essence in that the Son comes from the Father’ (ibid.).
Therefore, the oneness of God, visible in the identity of essence and predicable
in relation to it, is traced back to the derivation of the Son from the Father.
78.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 119.
79.
Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.3 (PG 31, 605A).
80.
Ibid., Homily 4 (PG 31, 606D-8A).
81.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου,
p. 90 (Being as Communion, pp. 40–41).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 123

Intra-Trinitarian Taxis under the Sign of Meta and Syn

A final aspect of Basil’s reflection on the monarchy of the Father is
suggested by the doxology formulated in the treatise De Spiritu Sancto –
‘glory to the Father with (meta) the Son, with (syn) the Holy Spirit’ – which
differs from that used previously and perhaps of Alexandrian origin –
‘glory to the Father through (dia) the Son, in (en) the Holy Spirit’.82
Zizioulas notes the Basilian effort to affirm the coexistence of the three
persons, as deduced from liturgical, meta-historical and eschatological
experience, rather than from historical or economic experience, more
faithfully suggested by the other doxology.83 The important aspect is
precisely that of the affirmation of the coexistence of the Three at the
intra-trinitarian level. The union of the Three is in fact grasped by Basil
not only at the level of nature, but also of glory and dignity.84 Each
possesses glory at the same time as the Other and along with the Other.85
In order to understand Basil’s theological attempt, it is necessary to
consider that he intends to defend the orthodox trinitarian doctrine
from the pneumatomachians and his doxology from accusations of being
non-traditional. Basil is intent both on affirming the non-creativity of
the Holy Spirit in response to the pneumatomachians and on defending
his doxology which puts the Three on the same level. As is well known
and is reaffirmed by Zizioulas himself, Basil, thanks to a serious and
recurrent recourse to scriptural evidence, focuses on the affirmation of
the community of glorification and adoration of the Three, in which
each of the Three cannot be thought of without the Others, since with
the Others he is adored and glorified.
This means that the doctrine of the monarchy is not emphasised or
developed too much, although it is not absent. The Father, as we have
seen, is said to be the ‘first cause’ and, in the case of the doxology, the fact
that he is mentioned first, the Son second and the Holy Spirit third, refers
to the trinitarian taxis.86 Therefore, bearing in mind the Basilian teaching

82.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, pp. 187–88.
83.
Cf. ‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 10.
84.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu Sancto, 6.15 (PG 32, 93B).
85.
Cf. ibid., 8.17 (PG 32, 97B).
86.
It is expressly formulated in Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium,
I.20 (PG 29, 556–57); III.1 (PG 29, 654–58), as Zizioulas points out (cf.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203). We have seen how Zizioulas has observed
that even the anaphora of Basil’s liturgy – like that of Chrysostom’s – is
124 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

on the Father as the one who gives another the principle of being, the
question to be examined is whether and how the co-glorification of the
Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit clarifies the meaning of the Father’s
ontological principiality. The Father, that is, the hypostatic being with
the Son and the Holy Spirit, as such, is the principle of the being of the
Son and the Holy Spirit as divine hypostatic beings, united by nature,
glory and dignity. In this sense, to affirm that ‘the Father alone is the
cause’ means to affirm that the Father, as the person whose identity is
unthinkable without the Son and the Holy Spirit, is the cause of the Son
and the Holy Spirit, as beings united to the Father by nature, glory and
dignity. Therefore, the expression ‘the Father alone is the cause’ does not
mean that the Father is the cause as an ‘absolute person’ or ‘individual’,
i.e. as a particular being constituted prior to relations. On the contrary,
on the basis of Basilian reflection on doxology and trinitarian taxis, he
repeatedly affirms that the cause of trinitarian being is a personal being,
that is, a relational being.87 The basis of the consubstantiality of the Three
consists in the derivation of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father,
whose being is with the Son and the Holy Spirit.
For Zizioulas, in fact, Basil’s assertion that the Holy Spirit is third in
dignity88 and order, and not in nature, since there is only one Godhead,
is very clear.89 Taxis refers to the hypostatic level and thus to personal
distinction and derivation.90 The derived being of the divine persons
does not indicate a succession of ‘individual’ beings, but a relational
being – a being-with, so to speak – that has as its ontological principle
the person of the Father. Zizioulas completes the picture by showing
how this ontological status of con-glorification of the divine persons is
presented with reference also to the doctrine of perichōrēsis.91 Zizioulas
quotes Letter 38, attributed by him, as mentioned, to Basil:

addressed exclusively to the Father (cf. «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ
ἀνθρώπου», p. 18). Of the Basilian doxology, however, Zizioulas cites only
the affirmation of homotimia and the divinity of the Three, and not the
affirmation of taxis (cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’,
p. 189).
87.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 187.
88.
Dignity is linked to order.
89.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, III.1 (PG 29, 656A); ‘The Father
as Cause’, p. 140.
90.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, I.14–15 (PG 29, 544–48); ‘The
Father as Cause’, p. 142.
91.
Zizioulas points out the fact that Basil is aware of the objection of
the Pneumatomachians, according to whom in ancient doxology the
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 125

Whatever the Father is, is also found in the Son and whatever
the Son is, is also found in the Father. The Son is found in his
entirety within the Father and he has the Father in his entirety
within him. Thus, the hypostasis of the Son is the image
and the likeness by which the Father can be known and the
hypostasis of the Father is known in the image of the Son.92

Zizioulas comments: ‘The three persons inhere in one another,

so each is found entirely within the other. Each person has his own
ontological integrity, and yet they are one.’93 In conclusion, it may
be seen that, for Zizioulas, Basil held that the person of the Father is
the ontological principle of the being of the Son and the Holy Spirit,
as consubstantial alterities, subsisting in perfect being not marked by
necessity, such that the unity of God is expressed at the level of substance
and perichōrēsis.

Gregory of Nazianzus: The Father as Aitia and Henōsis

of the Three
Zizioulas consistently refers to Nazianzen’s teaching on the monarchy of
the Father. From the number of quotations, it can be said that he is the
Church Father to whom he referred the most.
Zizioulas sees in Nazianzen, in full conformity with the Cappadocian
perspective, the intention to counter Sabellius and Eunomius. He does
this by focusing primarily on two notions: that of hypostasis (person)
and that of aitia (cause). With regard to the former, it has been said
that Nazianzen, in line with Basil and Nyssen, strongly emphasised
the ontological integrity of the three hypostaseis – the Trinity is three
suns, one light94 – as particularities that define a schesis, and that are
understood in relation to both tropos hyparxeōs and pōs einai.95 Zizioulas
points out that the integration of the notion of substance into a personalist

juxtaposition of the preposition ‘in’ – central to the doctrine of perichōrēsis –

with the Holy Spirit was tantamount to affirming the latter’s spatial link,
thereby declaring his creatureliness (cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics,
p. 73).
92.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.8 (PG 32, 340C), cited by Zizioulas in Lectures
in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 62–63.
93.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 62.
94.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 34; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.14 (PG 36,
149A).
95.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 126; ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion
and Otherness, p. 160; ‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, pp. 175–76; Lectures
126 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

perspective led the Cappadocians, and uniquely Nazianzen, to develop

the trinitarian theological meaning of the notion of aitia. It is precisely
this notion which, applied to the Father, is used by Nazianzen to refute
Eunomius. The Eunomian identification of the Father, and therefore of
the ingenerate being, with the substance of God, meant that only the
Father could be considered God. Nazianzen, on the other hand, showed,
in addition to the already mentioned distinction between person and
substance, also, as did Basil himself, that the cause of God’s being is not
substance but the person of the Father, the guarantor of the Son and the
Holy Spirit as consubstantial alterities and of the divine substance as the
One God.

God as Ousia, as Each of the Three, as the Three Together,

as the Father
With regard to the notion of ‘God’, there is great conceptual complexity
in Nazianzen.
The Father as ousia: Zizioulas observes that for Eunomius ousia is
considered as an ontologically primary reality, so that only the Father
is the ousia of God.96 Nazianzen replies that the Father, in itself, does
not indicate substance but, in order to refute Eunomius, he admits as
a hypothesis the identification of the Father with substance. On this
basis he states that the Father will also include the Son, since the Father
produces that which is of his own substance.97 Therefore, the statement
that ‘the Father is a substance’,98 and therefore, by extension, also ‘the
Son or the Holy Spirit are a substance’, can be admitted,99 if a relational
substance connected to consubstantial otherness is meant, that is, if the
Father ‘will also include the Son’.100
Each of the Three is ‘God’: This is stated by Nazianzen in the context
of his reflections on the Three in relation to creation,101 or when the
Son (but this also applies to the Holy Spirit) is not named together with

in Christian Dogmatics, p. 57; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG

36, 96A).
96.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 187.
97.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96AB).
98.
[O]ὐσια τις ὁ Πατήρ (ibid.).
99.
‘Let it also, by your grace’ – Ἔστω δέ, ὑμῶν χάριν (ibid.).
100.
συνεισάξει τὸν Υἱόν (ibid.).
101.
C.A. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of
God: In Your Light We Shall See Light (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2008), p. 205.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 127

the Father. In fact, the Son, as Nazianzen explains, is called ‘God’ with
regard to nature, ‘Lord’ with regard to the monarchy of the Father.102
The Three are one nature, the one God: Zizioulas, in reference to the
Cappadocians, acknowledges that the Three are identified with the one
substance103 and that ‘God is the communion of this Holy Trinity’.104 As
Christopher A. Beeley points out,105 Nazianzen talks about the Three as the
one God,106 one in Godhead,107 a single physis,108 a single ousia,109 a single
thing (monas, en). The statement that the Three are ‘one nature, one God’
implies not only that the Three together are one nature and that the Three
together are one God, but also that the one God is understood as the one
nature.110
Essentially there are two reasons for this conceptual complexity. The
first consists in the fact that hypostasis and ousia, indicating realities that
distinguish themselves by presupposing each other, make it possible to
speak of God as nature, without thereby denying the affirmation of God as
Trinity of persons. The second consists in the doctrine of the ontological
monarchy of the Father, which will be discussed later and which is the
basis for the various terminological uses we have just seen: in this sense,
the Father as the cause of the unity and the Trinity of God makes it
possible to speak of God as nature, as the Three, as each of the Three, etc.,
but also to speak of God as a person. Here are some recurring expressions.
God is the Father: In several instances Nazianzen, based also on
scriptural testimony, refers to God as the Father.111

102.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 25.15 (PG 35, 1220).
103.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 106.
104.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 53.
105.
Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God, p. 221.
106.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 18.16 (PG 35, 1005A); 20.7 (PG 35, 1073A).
107.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 21.13 (PG 35, 1096B); 34.15 (PG 36, 256A).
108.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 30.16 (PG 36, 236A); 34.16 (PG 36, 256A).
109.
‘[O]f the primary essence’ – τῆς πρώτης οὐσίας (Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 34.13 [PG 36, 253A]). Sometimes Nazianzen employs the equivalent
expression πρώτη φύσις (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 28.7 [PG 36,
33C]). God as primary essence is a Platonic and Aristotelian definition; it is
debated whether he draws it from Plato or from Aristotle (cf. C. Moreschini,
Filosofia e letteratura in Gregorio di Nazianzo [Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1997],
pp. 48–49).
110.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 26.19 (PG 35, 1252C).
111.
‘[N]or is the Spirit the Son because he comes from God’ – οὔτε τὸ Πνεῦμα
Υἱὸς ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.9 [PG 36, 144A];
cf. 39.12 [PG 36, 348A]).
128 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

The one God/the One God/the One is the Father: These expressions for
Zizioulas are used interchangeably to indicate the ontological principle of
divine being. Nazianzen questions the ontological principle of the divine
unity and Trinity, categorically excluding the existence of three principles
in God, as in polytheism, or only one principle, as in the Jewish manner.112
He attributes to the Father, as a person indicating not a substance but
a relationship, the being of the one God, the One God. He writes, for
example, that there is ‘one God (ἕνα Θεὸν) begotten, the Father; one Lord
begotten, the Son’;113 ‘there is one God (εἷς Θεός), [because] the Son and
the Spirit are brought back to one cause’.114 In this sense, being the one
God/the One God, understood not in the manner of the Jews, consists
in being, in Zizioulan terms, the Father who is Trinity,115 in the sense of
the one principle of the unity and distinction of the Trinity. On the basis
of these clarifications, it is possible to see with Zizioulas what the main
conceptual nodes of Nazianzen’s reflection are: the Father as the cause of
personal distinction, the Father as the foundation of union, the Father as
the fulfilment of the Trinity.

The Father as Anarchon/Anaition

Nazianzen attributes to the Father, in addition to the terms ingenerate
(ἀγέννητον)116 and principle (ἀρχὴ),117 widely used by Basil, also
unoriginate (ἄναρχον)118 and incausate (ἀναίτιον).119 On this basis,
Zizioulas talks about the Father as the ‘ultimate ontological category in

112.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 25.16 (PG 35, 1220D-21A); 20.6 (PG
35, 1072BC).
113.
[ Ἕ]να μὲν εἰδέναι Θεὸν ἀγέννητον, τὸν Πατέρα, ἕνα δὲ γεννητὸν Κύριον,
τὸν Υἰόν (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 25.15 [PG 35, 1220B]).
114.
[E]ἷς μὲν Θεός, εἰς ἓν αἴτιον καὶ Υἱοῦ καὶ Πνεύματος ἀναφερομένων
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 20.7 [PG 35, 1073A]).
115.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 95.
116.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.6 (PG 32, 337A); Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 25.15 (PG 35, 1220Β).
117.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15
(PG 36, 476A).
118.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 23.11 (PG 35, 1161C); 30.19 (PG 36, 128C);
32.5 (PG 36, 180B); 33.17 (PG 36, 236B); 42.15 (PG 36, 476B).
119.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Carmina Dogmatica, I/I.I.25 (PA 2); I/II.X.988–
89 (PG 37, 751).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 129

God’.120 Indeed, for Nazianzen, being ingenerate indicates the fact that
the Father does not derive his being from anyone and that there is no
principle prior to him. In fact, he writes: ‘we must not believe that the
Father is subject to a principle, lest we introduce something prior to the
first being’,121 since ‘the Father is without principle, he has his being from
nothing other than himself ’.122 Zizioulas comments that this excludes
‘the logical possibility that the ultimate giver (the Father) receives
his personhood from those who receive it from him (e.g., the Son)’.123
Second, both the ingenerate being (i.e. the being that comes from no one
but itself) and the generated being ‘are in relation to nature, they are not
nature’,124 in the sense that they concern the mode of existence of the
divine nature, not the divine nature itself. Third, being without principle
is closely related to being principle. Nazianzen deliberately juxtaposes
the two terms: the Father is ‘being without principle and principle’.125
This is the hypostatic property of the Father, what makes the Father be
Father and uniquely – μόνως126 – and from the beginning Father.127 It
is necessary to establish whether being without a principle has only a
negative or also a positive meaning. Zizioulas links the freedom of the
Father more to paternity than to ingenerateness, noting that Nazianzen
himself warns against focusing on the term ‘ingenerate’ rather than on

120.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 125.
121.
[M]ήτε ὑπὸ ἀρχὴν ποιεῖν τὸν Πατέρα, ἵνα μὴ τοῦ πρώτού τι πρῶτον
εἰσαγάγωμεν (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 25.15 [PG 35, 1220B]; cf.
also 23.7 [PG 35, 1160]; 29.9 [PG 36, 85A]).
122.
Ἄναρχος οὖν ὁ Πατήρ· οὐ γὰρ ἑτέρωθεν αὐτῷ οὐδὲ παρ᾽ἑαυτοῦ τὸ εἶναι
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 20.7 [PG 35, 1073]; my italics). The Son
and the Holy Spirit are not without principle although they are eternally. The
principle is ontological, not temporal, as Zizioulas points out (cf. ‘The Father
as Cause’, p. 128). When the Son is said to be the ‘principle of everything’,
the reference is to creation. Nazianzen writes that the Logos is the principle
that comes from the principle, the light that comes from the light, the source
of life (cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 38.13 [PG 36, 325B]).
123.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 144.
124.
Περὶ γὰρ τὴν φύσιν … , οὐ φύσις (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15
[PG 36, 476B]).
125.
[Ἀ]νάρχου, καὶ ἀρχῆς (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 20.7 [PG 35,
1073A]).
126.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 25.16 (PG 35, 1221A).
127.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 (PG 36, 76C).
130 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the term ‘Father’.128 Although it must be acknowleded that the climate

in which the Cappadocian reflection matures was perturbed by the
controversy with Eunomius, in fact we can see that Nazianzen prefers
to speak of Father and paternity rather than of ingenerate, without
however neglecting this term and, like Basil, referring to it often.
The notion of ‘ingenerate’ does not only indicate that the Father is
not the Son, and is not only taken up in controversy with Eunomius,129
although this aspect does not seem to be of interest to Zizioulas. Yet,
the notions of ‘ingenerate’ and ‘Father’ seem to be closely related. If the
Father is defined as ‘unoriginate principle’, and his peculiarity is that of
generating without being generated, ingenerateness is connected with
that condition of divine glorification that the Father, by generating,
shares with the Son. The Son ‘shares in the glory of him who is without
a cause, because he comes from him who is without a cause, and the fact
of being begotten is added to him’.130 The Father is presented as the one
who is without a cause, and his being without a cause is connected with
the glory of the Father, which is shared with the Son and constitutes
glory for the latter. At the same time, the Father is also presented as the
one from whom the Son comes. For the latter, it is glory to come from
the One who is without cause. Therefore, generation is also related to
glory. For the Father it is glory to exist without a cause and to generate
such a generation as to constitute glory for the Son, understood both as
participation in the being of him who is without a cause and as being
generated. Leaving aside for the moment the examination of a possible
link between the Gregorian notion of ‘glory’ and the Zizioulan notion of
‘ontological freedom’, I simply point out here that Nazianzen reads the
notion of ingenerateness and paternity in a unified way, preferring, like
Zizioulas, the notion of paternity, but emphasising more than Zizioulas
the ingenerateness.

The Father as the Only Archē/Pēgē/Aitia of the Son and

the Holy Spirit
In the following paragraphs we touch on one of the most discussed
points of the theology of Nazianzen and consequently of Zizioulas:

128.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 204; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.23
(PG 36, 157–60).
129.
In contrast to Nazianzen, on the Western side, Augustine holds that
‘ingenerate’ simply means that the Father is neither the Son nor the Holy
Spirit (cf. Augustine of Hippo, De Trinitate, V.7–8 [PL 42, 915–16]).
130.
Τῆς τε γὰρ τοῦ ἀναιτίου δόξης μετέχοι ἄν, ὅτι ἐκ τοῦ ἀναιτίου, καὶ πρόσεστι
τὸ τῆς γεννήσεως (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.11 [PG 36, 89A]).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 131

the Father as the only personal cause of consubstantial otherness.131

Nazianzen affirms many times that the Father is the origin (archē),
source (pēgē) and cause (aitia) of the Son and the Holy Spirit. Although
Zizioulas does not distinguish the three terms much, he is aware of their
polysemy; therefore, we shall examine some of the recurring meanings
in Nazianzen as read and interpreted by Zizioulas.
The first term – archē – is used many times,132 referring to the Father
and in connection with the notion of monarchy (a single archē), although
from a semantic point of view it refers to a more natural and therefore
impersonal meaning.133 It is used in an ontological sense – the Father
is the only archē of the Son and the Holy Spirit – and in a moral sense,
that is, concerning the unity of intellect and will of the Three.134 With
Claudio Moreschini it is possible to add that the term ‘monarchy’ takes
on further meanings: it

is used … to oppose the Trinity to polytheism in or. 29, 2

and in the same passage in or. 31, 14 (cf. also 40, 41; 39, 8).
Elsewhere he understands ‘monarchy’ in a narrower sense, i.e.
with reference to God’s dominion over creation (cf. or. 25, 15
and 30, 18).135

To the occurrences in which Nazianzen talks about the Father as

the only archē of the Son and the Holy Spirit, two passages must be
juxtaposed – Oratio 29.2 and Oratio 31.14 – which attribute the monarchy

131.
The debate is very open. Beeley offers an overview of the various positions
(see C.A. Beeley, ‘Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father
in Gregory of Nazianzus’, Harvard Theological Review 100, no. 2 [2007],
pp. 199–214, esp. pp. 201–4). Zizioulas, for his part, cites, among studies
supporting his thesis, A. Meredith, The Cappadocians (London: Geoffrey
Chapman, 1995) (cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 134).
132.
See, for example, Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.38 (PG 35, 445B); 20.6,
7, 10 (PG 35, 1072C, 1073A, 1077A); 23.7–8 (PG 35, 1057–60); 29.3 (PG 36,
77B); 38.13, 15 (PG 36, 328D); 40.43 (PG 36, 420B); cf. D.G. Guillén, «Padre
es nombre de relación»: Dios Padre en la teología de Gregorio Nacianceno
(Rome: Pontificia Universidad Gregoriana, 2010), p. 93.
133.
Cf. ‘One Single Source’, p. 42; Nazianzen writes that the Father is principle
as cause, source and eternal light (cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 20.7
(PG 35, 1073A)].
134.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 133–34; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2
(PG 36, 76B).
135.
Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 272.
132 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

to the Three and to the substance, respectively. They are noteworthy and
will be discussed below.
The second term – pēgē – also suggests a more impersonal interpretation,
like archē. With Domingo García Guillén it is possible to observe that it
is used more rarely than archē and as its synonym, referring both to the
Father and to the Deity in general.136
Finally, the terms aitia/prōtē aitia/aitios/aition are, like archē, used
many times,137 probably as synonyms of the latter,138 but they indicate
more unambiguously the cause as personal, that is, for Zizioulas, a
personal, free and willing agent.139
In most cases, the Father is said to be the cause in relation to the Son
and the Holy Spirit.140 This leads Zizioulas and other scholars to believe
that the Father is the cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit and that this

136.
With reference to the Father, see, for example, Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 20.7 (PG 35, 1073A), and to the Godhead in general, Gregory of
Nazianzus, Carmina Dogmatica, I/I.IV.81 (PA 20); cf. Guillén, «Padre es
nombre de relación», p. 98. Guillén mentions, among the minor terms that
Nazianzen applies to the Father, and with a meaning similar to pēgē, also
‘root’ (riza) and ‘light’ (phōs) (ibid., pp. 97–101).
137.
With regard to aitia, cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 30.16 (PG 36,
124C); 31.30 (PG 36, 168C); 41.9 (PG 36, 441B); with regard to prōtē aitia,
cf. Oratio 4.121 (PG 35, 660C); 6.15 (PG 35, 741B); 28.13 (PG 36, 44A);
31.14 (PG 36, 149A); with regard to aitios, cf. Oratio 29.15 (PG 36, 93B) (cf.
Guillén, «Padre es nombre de relación», p. 96). Sometimes these terms
refer expressly to ‘Father’, sometimes to ‘God’ and sometimes the reference
is not specified.
138.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 20.7 (PG 35, 1073A); 20.10 (PG 35,
1077A); 40.43 (PG 36, 420B); J.P. Egan, ‘αἴτιος/“Author”, αἰτία/“Cause”
and ἀρχή/“Origin”: Synonyms in Selected Texts of Gregory of Nazianzus’,
Studia Patristica 32 (1997), pp. 102–7.
139.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 186; ‘One
Single Source’, p. 42. The affirmation of the ‘personal’ meaning of aitia is
confirmed by Guillén, who points out that the Latin equivalent of this term
in Hilary of Poitiers is ‘author’ (cf. Guillén, «Padre es nombre de relación»,
p. 95). The Latins avoid the term ‘cause’, since it suggests the idea that cause
and caused are distinct in their essence. On Nazianzen’s affirmation about
the ‘personhood’ of the Father, and consequently of the Son and the Holy
Spirit, see Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 263.
140.
Sometimes this refers to causation within the Godhead as divine being,
at other times to creative activity ad extra (cf. Guillén, «Padre es nombre
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 133

doctrine is central to his trinitarian thought.141 For Zizioulas Nazianzen’s

teaching on the causality of the Father is clear: the Father is the only
person who causes other persons in the Trinity, this causation occurs by
generation, in the case of the Son, and by procession, in the case of the
Holy Spirit.142 Since ‘Father’ is a name that indicates a relationship,143 we
have that the Father causes otherness by establishing a relationship with
it.144 Therefore, the notion of Father is relational in the ontological sense,
it indicates ‘the relationship, that is, the way in which the Father is in
relation to the Son and the Son in relation to the Father’,145 and therefore
a ‘mutual relationship’,146 which is asymmetrical.147
It should be added that, according to Zizioulas, the idea of the causality
of the Father is presented as an establishment of relationship through an
ecstatic movement. In this regard he recalls the image evoked by Nazianzen
of the ‘monad [which] “from the beginning” moved towards the dyad,
stopping at the triad’.148 But how is this statement to be understood? If

de relación», pp. 95–96). On the Father’s archē and aitia that are without
origin, see also N. Asproulis, ‘T.F. Torrance, John Zizioulas on the Divine
Monarchia: The Cappadocian Background and the Neo-Capadocian
Solution’, Participatio: Journal of the Thomas F. Torrance Theological
Fellowship 4 (2013), pp. 162–89, here at p. 173.
141.
Cf. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God;
Ladaria, ‘La fede in Dio Padre nella tradizione cattolica’, Lateranum 66,
no. 1 (2000), pp. 109–28; Moreschini, ‘Dio Padre negli scritti dei Padri
Cappadoci’, in S.A. Panimolle (ed.), Dizionario di spiritualità biblico-
patristica. I grandi temi della S. Scrittura per la ‘Lectio Divina’, vol. 1, Abbà-
Padre (Rome: Edizioni Borla, 1992), pp. 279–96.
142.
The question of the procession of the Holy Spirit and the relative mediation
of the Son is addressed by Zizioulas in relation to the teaching of Nyssen
(see below, section titled ‘Gregory of Nyssa: The Focus on the Terms Aitios
and ek tou Aitiou).
143.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A).
144.
Moreschini confirms this point (Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 272),
mentioning Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.9 (PG 36, 141C); 26.19 (PG
35, 1252C); 29.16 (PG 36, 96A).
145.
σχέσεως δὲ καὶ τοῦ πῶς ἔχει πρὸς τὸν Υἱὸν ὁ Πατήρ, ἢ ὁ Υἱὸς πρὸς τὸν
Πατέρα (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 [PG 36, 96A]).
146.
[Π]ρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσεως (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.9 [PG 36, 141C]).
147.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 143.
148.
Διὰ τοῦτο μονὰς ἀπ᾽ἀρχῆς εἰς δυάδα κινηθεῖσα, μέχρι τριάδος ἔστη
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 [PG 36, 76B]; cf. 23.8 [PG 35, 1160C]).
134 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the latter immediately afterwards explicitly states that the triad towards
which the movement is directed indicates the Three, the problem is how
to understand the term monad and consequently the term dyad. For
Zizioulas the monad is identified with the Father, the dyad with the Father
and the Son and the triad with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.149
Thus, Nazianzen would be explicating the trinitarian taxis: the Father, the
First, generates the Son, the Second, and the Father with the mediation
of the Son brings forth the Holy Spirit, the Third. The Son must come
second, by virtue of his being the Only Begotten, while what is specific
to the Holy Spirit is to proceed (ekporeuesthai) from the Father. In this
way, the personal derivation of the Holy Spirit is distinguished from that
of the Son from the Father and placed in the taxis.150 On the other hand,
if we understand by ‘monad’ the divine nature, we have that the monad
(nature) moves towards the dyad (the Father and the Son) and, from
there, to the triad (the Three). In that case it would be necessary to assume
that the Three arise from nature, but this is excluded by Nazianzen, as
Zizioulas has pointed out.151 Zizioulas is supported here by Moreschini,
who, referring to the image of the single beam of light in the three suns
connected to each other,152 states that: ‘Gregory excludes any causal
relationship between the divine essence and the divine Persons. In fact,
the light is not shared by the three suns as if it were their cause.’153 In
his discussion of man’s knowledge of God, Zizioulas takes up this very
passage from Nazianzen and states that the discourse on God begins
with the confession of the Father, progresses to the confession of the Son
together with the Father, and finally to that of the Holy Spirit together
with the Father and the Son.154

149.
Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and the Knowledge of God,
p. 216; Moreschini, Filosofia e letteratura in Gregorio di Nazianzo,
pp. 125f., 131.
150.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 39.12 (PG 36, 348B). Nazianzen states,
with reference to ekporeusis, that he introduces a new term: ‘if in fact I am
allowed to introduce new terms for the sake of clarity’(ibid.). The inspiration
for the term ekporeusis is Johannine (cf. John 15:26).
151.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 119–20, 131.
152.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.14 (PG 36, 149A).
153.
Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 272.
154.
Cf. Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 23 (PG 91, 1256D-
61A). On the ambiguity of the concept of the monad in Maximus, see
Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three, p. 23. Maximus appears to
identify the Father with the one God, the monad, and the triad.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 135

We should note that generation and spiration are presented as

movements of/from the monad,155 movements of a person that generate
relation and otherness. These movements generate relation and otherness
with reference both to the caused and the causer. The first movement of
the monad that Nazianzen mentions causes the dyad (the Father and
the Son). Similarly, the second movement, also caused by the monad
(the subject of Nazianzen’s statement remains the monad), causes the
triad (the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit). This is borne in mind by
Zizioulas when he talks about the Father who, in generating and causing
to proceed, constitutes his own hypostasis.156 It follows that the Son and
the Holy Spirit – the begetting (τὸ γέννημα) and the production/emission
(τὸ πρόβλημα)157 – if they do not in any way cause the Father’s being, are
nevertheless constitutive of his being, as Zizioulas observes when he states
that ‘the Father too, “acquires”, so to speak, deity only “as” the Son and the
Spirit are in existence’.158
If the picture outlined so far points towards an understanding of the
monarchy as referring to the Father, there are, however, two less clear-
cut passages of Nazianzen that might suggest an affirmation of the
monarchy as referring to the Three or to the divine nature. Both are
considered by Zizioulas, albeit in different ways. In the first, Nazianzen
writes that by monarchy he means:

not that which is limited to a single person (for it is possible

that even the one, if it is in disagreement with itself, leads to
multiplicity) but that which is constituted by an equal dignity
of physis, by the agreement of will, by the identity of movement,
by convergence towards the one of what comes from it (which
is impossible for a generated physis), so that, even if there is
diversity in number, it is not divided in ousia.159

155.
Moreschini notes how in order to speak of God Nazianzen introduces the more
personal verb ‘to move’ (κινεῖσθαι), thus underlining the difference with the
God of philosophy, with reference to whom the more impersonal verb ‘to pour
oneself out’ (χέω/χέομαι) is used (Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, pp. 273–77).
156.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 196; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.6–7
(PG 36, 80–84).
157.
This is how Nazianzen defines the hypostatic properties, respectively, of the
Son and the Holy Spirit (ibid. 39.2 [PG 36,76B]).
158.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 140.
159.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 (PG 36, 76B); cf. ‘The Father as Cause’,
p. 132.
136 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

For Zizioulas, this is a reflection of Nazianzen that does not concern

the ontological level of the Trinity but its moral level. Is this really so? As
Chiara Sani and Maria Vincelli observe in Claudio Moreschini’s Italian
edition of Nazianzen’s Orations, the monarchy not ‘limited to a single
person’ indicates that Nazianzen is not talking about the monarchy of
the Father but is referring to the ‘rigidly monarchical’ conception of the
Jews or of Sabellius, thus disavowing it.160 The meaning of this passage
therefore does not lie in the assertion that monarchy – being one archē –
is referred to the Three either on the ontological or moral level, although
the latter is not to be excluded. On the contrary, Nazianzen is speaking
here of the ontological monarchy of the Father, understanding the
Father not in a subordinationist or modalist sense, but – as Zizioulas
would say – in a ‘personal’ way, that is to say, in such a way that his
person represents the principle of ‘equality of nature’, of ‘agreement of
opinion’, of ‘identity of movement’, of ‘convergence towards the one
of that which comes from it’. In this sense, the monarchy of the Father
affects and involves all Three not in the sense that each of the Three is
the archē, or that the Three together are the archē, but that the Father is
the archē of the foundation of the equal dignity of nature, agreement of
will, identity of movement of the Three, and convergence towards the
one of the beings that come from it.
In the second text mentioned by Zizioulas,161 Nazianzen writes:

For us God is one because divinity (θεότης) is one; and

that which derives from him refers to oneness, though it is
believed to be three. For it is not that one is more God and
another less so; nor is one before and the other after; nor is
God divided in will or apportioned in power; nor does he
exist as characteristics found in divisible beings: but divinity
(ἡ θεότης) is indivisible even in distinct beings. If one must
put it succinctly, it is like three suns co-inhering in each other
as a single blending of light. So when we turn to the divinity
and the first cause and the monarchy, what appears to us is
one; but when we turn to the beings in which the divinity
is found and which come timelessly from the first cause and
with equal glory, then it is three beings that we worship.162

160.
Gregorio di Nazianzo, Tutte le Orazioni, ed. by C. Moreschini (Milan:
Bompiani, 2000), p. 1312.
161.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 106–7.
162.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.14 (PG 36, 148D-149A).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 137

The first statement seems to suggest the idea that the Three derive
from a single cause which is the divine essence. However, according
to Beeley, ‘Gregory’s consistent doctrine of the monarchy of the Father
and parallel expressions in other texts make this reading unlikely. This
sentence is effectively a paraphrase of the first sentence of Oration 20.7.’163
In the latter, as we have already seen, Nazianzen affirms that ‘there
is only one God, [because] the Son and the Spirit are referred back to
a single cause’, which – I would add – continues as follows: ‘without
merging them or confusing them by virtue of the oneness and identity of
movement and will of the divine nature – so to speak – and the identity
of the substance’.164 If only the Son and the Holy Spirit are brought back
to a single cause (the one God) and if they are not reunited, at least not
primarily, on the basis of the identity of the substance, to whom must
we refer this cause if not to the Father? In this sense, in Oratio 31.14,
as Beeley says, Nazianzen ‘mentions the result of the monarchy (the
single, shared Divinity) before the monarchy itself ’.165 We therefore have
the following: we know that there is One God, the Father, from the fact
that there is one Godhead, one divine nature; therefore, when we look
at both Godhead (the divine nature) and First Cause (the Father) and
monarchy (the Son and the Holy Spirit deriving from the principle which
is the Father), what appears is the one (primarily in the sense of the archē
which is the Father, secondarily in the sense of Godhead); when we look
at the beings in which Divinity is found (the Three) and which exist from
the First Cause (the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father), three are
the beings worshipped (the Three).

The Father, Principle of the ‘How’ of the Godhead

One point that Zizioulas is keen to highlight is that, if the Father causes
otherness, it is consubstantial otherness.166 This aspect is very important
for Nazianzen, who wants to show that he does not hold a tritheistic
perspective.
Zizioulas cites the passage in which Nazianzen states that ‘it is from
Him [the Father] that Beings that are equal derive their equality to

163.
Beeley, ‘Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory
of Nazianzus’, pp. 210–11.
164.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 20.7 (PG 35, 1073A).
165.
Beeley, ‘Divine Causality and the Monarchy of God the Father in Gregory
of Nazianzus’, p. 211; my italics.
166.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 143–44.
138 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Him and their existence’.167 The Father causes being that is equal to
him, and therefore consubstantiality, and existence, and consequently
specific, particular existence, not ousia.168 The Father in the same text is
called ‘greater’ (μεῖζον), but it is clear that the word ‘greater’ refers not
to nature but to cause.169 Now, if the Father does not give the other two
hypostaseis ousia but einai, this does not mean that being has nothing
to do with substance. Nazianzen states that the Father is ‘the principle
of divinity and goodness contemplated in the Son and the Holy Spirit’170
and Zizioulas comments that ‘divine substance cannot be said to exist
apart from the Father who “causes” its hypostasization, i.e., its being
the way it is’.171 This is not to say, as in Neoplatonism, that the Father
pre-emptively and fully possesses the substance and then mechanically
emanates172 it by subdividing it.173 Rather, it is affirmed that the Father
causes otherness, in the sense that he is the ‘principle of divinity’
(θεότητος … ἀρχὴ), as it is contemplated (θεωρουμένης) in the Son and
in the Holy Spirit: in the first case, ‘as (ὡς) Son and Logos’, in the second
case, ‘as (ὡς) procession and indissoluble (οὐ διαλύτῳ) Spirit’.174 It is on
this basis that Zizioulas emphasises that the Father’s principle is not the
divine substance itself but its mode of existence.
Consequently, the divinity contemplated in the Son, whose principle
is the Father, is precisely the being and existence of the Son equal
to the Father, according to Nazianzen’s words quoted above. The

167.
[Ἐ]ξ οὗ καὶ τὸ ἴσοις εἶναι, τοῖς ἴσοις ἐστὶ, καὶ τὸ εἶναι (Gregory of
Nazianzus, Oratio 40.43 (PG 36, 420B); I base my translation on Gregorio
di Nazianzo, Tutte le orazioni, p. 973. Zizioulas translates: ‘from Him flows
both the equality and the being of equals’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 143.
168.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 129.
169.
Οὐ γὰρ κατὰ τὴν φύσιν τὸ μεῖζον, τὴν αἰτίαν δέ (Gregory of Nazianzus,
Oratio 40.43 [PG 36, 420B]; cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 144).
170.
[M]ὴ θεότητος ὢν ἀρχὴ καὶ ἀγαθότητος, τῆς ἐν Υἱῷ καὶ Πνεύματι
θεωρουμένης (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.38 [PG 35, 445C]; cf. 20.6
[PG 35, 1072C]). The divinity represents the divine substance (cf. Moreschini,
I Padri Cappadoci, p. 269) that remains absolutely incomprehensible (cf.
‘Relational Ontology’, [Polkinghorne (ed.), The Trinity and an Entangled
World], 149; Gregory of Nazianzus, Orat. 2.17–30 [PG 35, 425–40]).
171.
‘Relational Ontology’, p. 149; cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 6 (PG 35,
721–52).
172.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 (PG 36, 76C).
173.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 20.7 (PG 35, 1073A).
174.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.38 (PG 35, 445C).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 139

Son is ultimately consubstantial with the Father in that his being/

existence is equal to the Father’s because he is derived from the Father.
Consubstantiality is therefore not a matter of a nature that precedes
persons and from which they come into being, but the expression of
personal derivation from the Father. This point is of great importance
for understanding and evaluating Zizioulas’ thesis on Cappadocian
personalism.175
This perspective is confirmed by the fact that personal derivation is
linked to the trinitarian taxis and not to nature.176 Nazianzen writes that
‘the Father is greater than the Son with regard to the cause’,177 that is, not
with regard to nature but to its mode of being, which consists in generating
‘others of full and equal ontological status’.178 Consubstantiality refers
neither to the derivation of the Three from a nature that precedes them
nor to the transmission of nature to the Son and the Holy Spirit by the
Father, but to a relational mode of existence that causes otherness yet
maintains the same divine ontological status.179 In other words, the
Gregorian affirmation of the Father as the principle of the divinity
contemplated in the Son indicates precisely the fact that the Father does
not cause the divine nature qua talis, but its mode of existence: the Father
is the ontological principle of the modes of existence – paternal, filial and
proceeding – of the Divinity.
Since the Father, as we have seen, indicates a schesis,180 in the sense
of ‘the state in which the Father is in relation (pros) to the Son’,181 it
follows that this being, which can be defined as relational, is also proper
to the Son: the name Father, as Nazianzen continues, also indicates

175.
Beeley supports this: cf. Beeley, Gregory of Nazianzus on the Trinity and
the Knowledge of God, pp. 213–14.
176.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 (PG 36, 476AB); ‘The Father as
Cause’, p. 138.
177.
[T]ῷ αἰτίῳ μείζων ὁ Πατὴρ (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.15 [PG 36,
93B]).
178.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 143; cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 40.43 (PG
36, 420B).
179.
This comes close to what Loudovikos argues, namely, that consubstantiality
is not merely about the commonality of a common nature, but an agapic
dynamic in the one nature (cf. N. Loudovikos, ‘Consubstantiality Beyond
Perichoresis’).
180.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A).
181.
πῶς ἔχει πρὸς τὸν Υἱὸν ὁ Πατήρ (ibid.).
140 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

‘the state in which the Son is in relation to the Father’,182 that is, a
reciprocal relationship – πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσεως.183 The name indicates
the reciprocal relationship that is not symmetrical, since archē is a term
attributed only to the Father. The caused personhood, like that of the
Son, is characterised by a receptivity that is proper to a person who exists
in a reciprocal relationship and not suffered. Zizioulas has this in mind
when he cites the words of Nazianzen: ‘it is not glory for him from whom
others derive the humiliation of those others who derive from him’.184 In
short, the divinity contemplated in the Son, whose principle is the Father,
is the being and existence equal to those of the Father, that is to say, under
the banner of their constitution according to the reciprocal relationship,
and in this the Son is consubstantial with the Father.

The Father as Cause in that He Is Thelōn

Connected to the question of personal causation of consubstantial
existence is another question of great importance for Zizioulas, which
is that of the will of the cause, namely of the Father. For Nazianzen,
the causation proper to the Father is to be understood as personal
derivation, but not in the sense of transmission of the nature by
the Father, which he previously possessed, independently of the
relationship with the Son and the Holy Spirit. The causativity proper to
the Father concerns personal derivation or, in other words, the mode
of existence of nature in its principiality. Zizioulas points out that for
Nazianzen, in line with Athanasian teaching, this conferral does not
occur by the will of the Father or involuntarily. In both cases, in fact,
it would be necessary to presuppose the Father as a being established
before relations, a Father who is not solely Father. In such a case, the
Father could generate, whether willingly or unwillingly, either by the

182.
[Ὁ] Υἱὸς πρὸς τὸν Πατέρα (ibid.; my italics).
183.
‘[B]ut the difference of manifestation – so to speak – or rather of their mutual
relations, caused the difference of their names’ – τὸ δὲ τῆς ἐκφάνσεως,
ἵν᾽οὕτος εἴπω, ἢ τῆς πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσεως διάφορον, διάφορον αὐτῶν
καὶ τὴν κλῆσιν πεποίηκεν (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.9 [PG
36, 141C]). Zizioulas’ account of this ‘asymmetrical’ reciprocity will be
discussed in the next chapter.
184.
[O]ὐ γὰρ δόξα τῷ ἐξ οὗ ἡ τῶν ἐκ αὐτοῦ ταπείνωσις (Gregory of
Nazianzus, Oratio 40.43 [PG 36, 420B]); Zizioulas translates this as: ‘For
the humiliation of the one who comes from him is no glory to the one from
whom (the other comes: τῷ ἐξ οὗ)’ (‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 143–44).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 141

ontological fullness of his being, as if by an ‘overflow of goodness’,185

or by the ontological deficiency of his being, as if he needed the Son to
achieve greater ontological fullness.186
Indeed, Nazianzen excludes that generation is due to the will, on the
basis that otherwise it would be necessary to admit a reality prior to
generation, a reality between the Father and generation, precisely that
of his will. In God, continues Nazianzen, the generation of the Son –
‘perhaps’ (ἴσως), he adds, evidently out of caution – corresponds to the
will of the Father to generate (ἡ τοῦ γεννᾶν θέλησις) and, above all, what
is willed does not belong to the will (θελήσεως) of the one who wills, but
to the subject who wills (τοῦ θέλοντος).187 This solution means that the
‘will to generate’ is removed from an understanding of it as a faculty or
capacity of an individual, and is brought back to the reality of the person
himself.188 For Nazianzen nothing stands between the will to generate
(ἡ τοῦ γεννᾶν θέλησις), or between the one who wills (ὁ θέλων/ὁ θελητής),
and the generation, and therefore what is generated. The latter, the willed,
comes not from the will, i.e. from a faculty/capacity of willing, but from
the willing itself. It is on this basis that one understands Nazianzen’s
admission of the possibility of speaking, albeit with circumspection, of
a will to generate not as a faculty/capacity, but as generation itself. The
impossibility of speaking and at the same time the possibility of speaking
of the will to generate is for Nazianzen a real aporia (ἀπορία)189 that can
not be ignored. In fact, in understanding the ‘genesis’ of the Trinity,

185.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 (PG 36,76C).
186.
‘For God has no necessity either not to produce or to produce equally with
Himself’ – Οὐ γὰρ ἀνάγκην ἔχει Θεός, ἢ μὴ προβάλλειν, ἢ προβάλλειν
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 25.17 [PG 35, 1224A]). Moreover,
Nazianzen recognises the glory of those who are without a cause – τοῦ
ἀναιτίου δόξης – in which those who come from the cause participate
[Oratio 29.11 (PG 36,89A)].
187.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.6 [PG 36, 81BC]; cf. ‘The Father as
Cause’, p. 121; ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness,
pp. 161–62).
188.
See ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 108; cf.
Moreschini, Filosofia e letteratura in Gregorio di Nazianzo, p. 130.
Nazianzen does not address the problem of consciousness in God, since
the Fathers, like Zizioulas, avoid attributing psychological faculties to God.
However, the highlighting of the Father as willing makes it difficult to
think of him as non-conscious.
189.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.7 (PG 36, 80D).
142 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

two dangers must be avoided. Any arbitrary interpretation of the ‘will

of the Father’ must be excluded. For Zizioulas this would constitute
an ‘individualistic’ or anthropomorphic understanding of the Trinity
in which the Father would represents a ‘dictated otherness’ for the Son
and the Holy Spirit. Also to be avoided is the ‘depersonalisation’ of the
Trinity, the imposition of a vision centred mainly on ousia that would
devalue the affirmation of the Father as the only archē, the affirmation
of the Father’s will to generate (ἡ τοῦ γεννᾶν θέλησις) and, above, all
the affirmation of the Father as ὁ θἐλων. On the contrary, as will be
seen, the solution Zizioulas arrives at is to show that the non-necessity
of generation is precisely the personal reality of the Father.190
The affirmation of the Father as willing is presented by Zizioulas as
a theological deepening of the thought of Cyril of Alexandria about the
competition of the divine will with the divine nature:191 just as there is
one divine nature, so there is one divine will. So, if, for Nazianzen, the
Father, as a willing subject, is the ontological principle of the Trinity,
this establishes the fact that in the Trinity there is only one will, the one
‘common to me and to you’, just as the Divinity is one.192 Therefore, the
paternal principiality of the modes of existence of the one divine nature
also indicates the principiality of the modes of ‘hypostasisation’ of the
one will.193
Zizioulas goes on to show that the causation of the Father does not only
concern the person of the Son and the Holy Spirit, but also that of the
Father himself. In fact, Nazianzen, after having asked himself whether

190.
Cf. ‘TheTrinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 161–62.
191.
This is a point recalled several times by Zizioulas; cf. ‘On Being Other’,
pp. 35–36; ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 121; ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in
Communion and Otherness, pp. 161–62; ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 195; with
reference to Cyril of Alexandria, De Sancta et Consubstantiali Trinitate
Dialogus II (PG 75, 780B); Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.5–7 (PG 36,
80–84); and 30.12 (PG 36, 120AB).
192.
[T]ὸ κοινὸν ἐμοῦ τε καὶ σοῦ (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 30.12 [PG
36, 120B]).
193.
For Koutloumousianos, Nazianzen’s emphasis on the will does not reveal
a personal/personalist view of the Trinity. Nazianzen, in response to the
heretics who gave ontological content to the divine will, thus making it an
intermediary in the generation of the Son, speaks not of the will but of the
willing (cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three, p. 18). In fact,
Nazianzen gives ontological content to the willing, that is, to a particularity
who wills.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 143

generation took place voluntarily or not, asks himself whether or not

the Father wanted to be God,194 that is, to determine his own person,
and refers back to the reasoning made in reference to generation: what is
wanted depends on the subject who wants it.195 Once again, the answer
comes as an aporia for the human mind: the Father is not required to be
what he is, but neither does this being depend on his will. His being does
not come from the will but, again, from the willing, that is, from the one
who wills, from his own person.
The point that needs to be clarified is that this monarchical
understanding, which also includes the datum of the will, avoids any
subordinationist or necessitating interpretation of the divine being, as
is the case in Neoplatonism. Personal derivation from the Father, for
Nazianzen, is the dogmatic datum that excludes both emanation and, as
will be seen, separations and truncations.196 From Nazianzen’s teaching
on the Father, from whom beings equal to him derive being equal to him,
Zizioulas derives the axiom that the non-necessity of the ontological
principle can only cause the non-necessity of what has been originated. In
the case of the non-necessity of the ontological principle, one can speak
of the non-necessity of the paternal being; in the case of the non-necessity
of what is originated, one can speak of the non-necessity of genesis or
emission. It is only in the sense of the non-necessity of the paternal being,
as well as of the being of what is originated, that Zizioulas supports the
affirmation of the Father as the cause of the trinitarian existence.197
On the basis of what has emerged, the admission of the necessity of
the being of the Son or of the Holy Spirit, insofar as they are originated
by the Father, is not linked to a theology of Nazianzen that is too patro-
centric, or to a reading of him influenced by existentialist preconceptions,
but to a conception of the Father that, in Gregorian terms, ‘dishonours’
(ἀτιμάζει) him, understanding him as a ‘dictated otherness’ that causes
beings that are not equal in nature and glory.198 In positive terms,
Nazianzen expresses the same concept as follows:

194.
‘The Father is God whether he wills or does not will’ – Θέλων Θεὸς ὁ
Πατήρ, ἢ μὴ θέλων (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.6 [PG 36, 80–81]).
195.
Cf. ibid.
196.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.8 (PG 36, 84B).
197.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 196; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2(PG
36, 76); 20.5–7 (PG 35, 1069–73).
198.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 23.7 (PG 35, 1160A). He dishonours
God (the Father) who posits him as the cause of beings inferior to him, as
do the Arians and the Macedonians.
144 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

We will only have the courage to say that if it is a great thing

for the Father to have come from no one, it is not a lesser
thing for the Son to have come from such a Father. For he
would participate in the glory of him who is without cause,
inasmuch as he comes from him who is without cause, and to
him it is added that he is begotten.199

The Father is said to be the uncaused cause of the Son, and the Son is
said to share in the glory, in the being of the uncaused, precisely because
he derives from them. This passage from Nazianzen should be borne in
mind, since it contains fundamental elements for the examination of
the question of the Father as the free cause of freedom.
All this leads Zizioulas to conclude that personal derivation is
characterised by will and freedom not as operations that take place
subsequent to the willing person, but as operations that are traced
back to the reality of the person, to the willing.200 Being and willing/
freedom – so to speak – come to coincide in/with the person, as a reality
that is constituted/constitutes itself relationally. It is on the basis of the
generation ‘not due to the will but to the willing’ that Zizioulas elaborates
the notion of freedom as personal being.201
Having noted that Zizioulas, following Nazianzen, holds that the
Father is the cause of distinction in the Trinity, it is now necessary
to examine how he understands the principiality of the Father as the

199.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.11 (PG 36, 89A). The expression would
participate (μετέχοι ἄν) can be misleading. The non-divisibility of the
divine nature entails the fact that the Son is not offered a part of the Father’s
doxa, but all of it, which he hypostasises in his own way.
200.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 130–31. In this sense, it is not possible to accept
Koutloumousianos’ criticism that for Zizioulas the will becomes a personal
and not a natural attribute (cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three,
p. 19). For Zizioulas, the divine will is unique and concomitant with nature.
The modes of existence, without which it simply is not, belong to the hypostasis.
They represent – so to speak – the hypostasisation of the will. Specifically, the
will’s principal mode of existence, which generates it and makes it proceed, is
the Father. In this sense, the will is traced back to the person.
201.
This leads Zizioulas to conclude that ‘the freedom of God is the freedom
of the Father’ (Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 61; cf. Gregory of
Nazianzus, Oratio 29.11 [PG 36, 76C]). Zizioulas links this statement to
Nazianzen’s refusal to understand God in a Platonic manner as a cup from
which goodness pours out.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 145

foundation of the unity of the Trinity. This is an important aspect

for an understanding of trinitarian being, which is alien to tritheistic
(individualistic, in Zizioulan terms) interpretations and lays the
foundations of the Zizioulan vision of the person as communion and
otherness.

The Father as Henōsis/Foundation of Henōsis

Zizioulas recognises that Nazianzen talks about divine unity in relation
to nature, and therefore to consubstantiality,202 but since nature is never
considered in abstracto, but in relation to the consubstantiality of the
Son and the Holy Spirit with the Father, he presents a further way of
speaking of divine unity, namely through the notions of perichōrēsis
and koinōnia. The unity of the Three is based on their possession of the
one and undivided divinity and on the perichōrēsis between them (each
‘co-inheres’ in the others).203 The two planes are closely connected. The
divine nature, as Zizioulas observes, refers to the equality of persons.204
Nazianzen is clear in affirming, against Eunomius, that the Father is
the cause of the Son, and that this being of the Father does not concern
the divine nature but the hypostatic otherness. The Father, in this sense,
is the cause of distinction, of otherness and precisely of consubstantial
otherness. The consubstantiality of the Son and the Holy Spirit, as we
have seen, is a reality rooted in the Father’s being, which is generative
of particularities whose being is equal to his, through the schesis with
himself.
This is how Nazianzen can speak of divine unity in reference to the
divine nature (‘there is only one God because there is only one Godhead
[θεότης]’);205 to perichōrēsis (‘like three suns co-inhering in each other
as a single blending of light’);206 to glorification (‘the worship of the
One is also worship of the Three, because of the equality of the three in

202.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 118.
203.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 106–7; Gregory
of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.14 (PG 36, 149A). Awad asserts that these are the
only elements on the basis of which to understand the divine monarchy
according to Nazianzen (cf. Awad, ‘Between Subordination and Koinonia’).
It will be argued that this position is not supported by Nazianzen’s texts.
204.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 129–30.
205.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.14 (PG 36, 148D).
206.
Ibid. (PG 36, 149A). Moreschini too believes that this passage suggests the
idea of perichōrēsis (Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 272).
146 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

honour and in divinity’);207 to the relation (‘Father’ indicates a schesis);208

and to the Father (‘to the Three belongs one nature, God. The union is
the Father, from whom and to whom what follows is led, not in such a
way as to be fused together, but to be held together, without distinction
of time, will or power’).209 Nazianzen also encapsulates this plurality of
meanings in a single passage: ‘When we turn our attention to the divine
nature and to the first cause and to monarchy, what appears to us is a
unity’,210 where first cause means the Father – ‘those who exist from the
first cause, without time and with equal glory’211 – while monarchy, as
we shall see below, means the concept that designates the Three in their
being derived from the Father as the only archē.212

207.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.12 (PG 36, 145D); 31.14 (PG 36, 149A);
Zizioulas paraphrases this as: ‘the worship of one person in the Trinity
implies the worship of the Three, for the Three are one in honour and
Godhead’ (‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 189).
208.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A); ‘The Father as
Cause’, p. 126.
209.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 (PG 36, 476B). Zizioulas translates
‘union is the Father, from whom and to whom the ordering (τάξις) of persons
runs its course’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 138). Cf. Koutloumousianos’
interpretation of this passage: ‘When Gregory is prepared to name the
Father “union” of the other Persons, it is because he recognises in the
Trinity a simple nature and identity of being, which means no space or
grade within the will or power’ (Koutloumousianos, The One and the
Three, p. 22). I do not see, however, why we should not recognise that for
Nazianzen the simplicity of the divine nature that eliminates space and
degree in the will is brought to the personal level of the hypostasis of the
Father (the principle of the Trinity and the divinity that is contemplated in
the Son and the Holy Spirit).
210.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.14 (PG 36, 149A).
211.
Ibid. Nazianzen, of course, affirms that the Father has no principle prior to
himself (cf. Oratio 25.15 [PG 35, 1220C]).
212.
Nigel Rostock argues that the Cappadocians distinguish between substantial
unity and relational (Father-centred) unity, and in this sense, Zizioulas’ view
is partial because it considers only the second type of unity (N. Rostock,
‘Two Different Gods or Two Types of Unity? A Critical Response to Zizioulas’
Presentation of “The Father as Cause” with Reference to the Cappadocian
Fathers and Augustine’, New Blackfriars 91 (2010), pp. 321–34). A similar
criticism is made by L. Ayres, ‘(Mis)Adventures in Trinitarian Ontology’,
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 147

If the unity of God is guaranteed by the Father as the one principle of

the Son and the Holy Spirit, it is on this basis, as Zizioulas argues, that
for Nazianzen the Father is the One God, sometimes simply called the
One.213 This doctrinal assumption allows one to speak of the Three or
of the Godhead as one God. Nazianzen shows how the Father, and only
he, has the ‘dignity of the principle’,214 since he is the principle of the
Godhead that is contemplated in the Son and the Holy Spirit, and then
goes on to say that therefore it is ‘necessary to preserve one God [ἕνα
Θεὸν] and to recognize three hypostaseis’.215 In this sense Nazianzen,
in line with Basil and, as we shall see, with Nyssen, provides a deeper
understanding of the scriptural datum and the lex orandi of God as the
Father.
For the time being, therefore, we can conclude that in God there are
not, in a polytheistic manner, three ontological principles; nor is there,
in a Sabellian manner, a principle consisting in the Father, so that the
Son and the Holy Spirit are collapsed into it; nor is there, in an Arian
manner, a principle consisting in the Father, so that the Son and the Holy
Spirit are brought into existence by it successively, and thus placed in a
subordinate ontological position. Nor is it possible to admit, in a Platonic
or Aristotelian or Plotinian manner, an impersonal principle consisting
in the one Godhead, nor, as for Colin E. Gunton or, more recently,
Aristotle Papanikolaou, a principle consisting in the Three together,216
nor, as for Alan J. Torrance, a principle consisting in the perichōrēsis/

in Polkinghorne (ed.), The Trinity and an Entangled World, pp. 130–45, at

p. 133, who argues that the Cappadocians do not arrive at a perfect synthesis
between the essentialist approach and the personalist approach, with
personalist ‘traction’, as Zizioulas believes. It is Zizioulas himself, however,
as we shall see in Part Two, who attemps such a synthesis.
213.
‘The Father is the One God because, as we have seen, he is the foundation
of the unity of the Three’; cf. ibid.; ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in
Communion and Otherness, p. 162; Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15
(PG 36, 476B).
214.
[Ἀ]ρχῆς ἀξίωμα (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.38 [PG 35, 445C]).
215.
Ibid. This expression, taken in its context, allows the possibility of assuming
the identification of the one God with the Father, since Nazianzen’s
reasoning focuses on the Father in whom alone we must recognise the
dignity of the principle.
216.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 136; Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian
Theology; A. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 151.
148 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Triunity,217 nor, as for Gisbert Greshake, a principle consisting in the

koinōnia of the Three.218 From the data considered, there is in the Trinity
for Nazianzen a single, personal principle, consisting in the Father, who,
as a relational particularity, makes the caused partakers of the glory of
his uncaused being.
One last aspect remains to be clarified, namely the meaning of the
idea of the ‘monarchy of the Three’ mentioned by Nazianzen.

The Father as the ‘Fulfilment’ of the Trinity and

the Monarchy of the Three
One aspect that Zizioulas draws attention to, though without devoting
much space to it, is suggested by Nazianzen’s statement on the
principiality of the Father, namely that the Son and the Holy Spirit lead
back to (or refer back to) the Father: ‘The henōsis is the Father, from
whom and to whom what follows is led back.’219 On this Zizioulas writes:
‘God is a movement from the Father to the Son and to the Spirit, which
is returned finally to the person of the Father’220 and ‘the Son and the
Spirit come from the Father and orient themselves entirely to him’.221
‘Is led back’ (ἀνάγεται) is understood by Zizioulas, without developing
this point, as being brought back, reconducting oneself, orienting oneself.
As for the idea of the ‘return’ of the persons caused to the Father in the
trinitarian theology of Nazianzen, Moreschini speaks, more generically,
of ‘bringing back’.222 Guillén takes up the idea of reconduction223 and
shows how it consists not in the dissolution of the caused in the causer,

217.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 136; A.J. Torrance, ‘Karl Rahner and John
Zizioulas: Two Contrasting Expositions of Triunity’, in A.J. Torrance,
Persons in Communion: An Essay on Trinitarian Description and Human
Participation (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1996), pp. 262–306.
218.
Cf. G. Greshake, Der dreieine Gott: Eine trinitarische Theologie (Freiburg
im Breisgau: Herder, 1997).
219.
Ἕνωσις δὲ ὁ Πατήρ, ἐξ οὗ καὶ πρὸς ὅν ἀνάγεται τὰ ἑξῆς (Gregory of
Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 [PG 36, 476B]; my italics).
220.
‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 147–48; my italics.
221.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 79.
222.
In his Italian translation of Gregory’s Orations, Moreschini translates
ἀνάγεσθαι variously as si ricondurre (‘to be brought back’ or ‘reconducted’,
or ‘to bring oneself back’) and ritornare al (‘to return to’).
223.
In this case, expressed by the verb ἀνάγεσθαι (ἀνάγειν) but, in other
occurrences, by the verbs ἀναφέρειν and ἀναπέμπειν (cf. Guillén, «Padre
es nombre de relación», p. 153).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 149

but in the ‘acknowledgement’, on the part of the caused, of their origin,

that is of their subsistence united (ἀλλ’ ὡς ἔχεσθαι) to the cause.224 The
term ‘Father’, as seen in Nazianzen, and which Guillén cites, indicates
a relationship, which is reciprocal, that is, the state in which the
Father is in relation to the Son and vice versa.225 The term ‘vice versa’
indicates the reciprocity between the Father and the Son, that is, the
‘acknowledgement’, in the sense of the ‘response’ of the Son and the Holy
Spirit to the causal action of the Father.226 This reciprocity therefore fits
into the framework of the teaching on the Father’s causality – specifying
its asymmetry227 – and deepens it: the Father constitutes the ontological
principle of reciprocity.
Furthermore, since the Father has always been the Father, there is
no interval between causality/provenance and return/response. It is in
receiving from the Father, the being equal to that of the Father, that
the Son and the Holy Spirit come from and are led back to the Father.
The response is rooted not in the Son, as a hypostasis detached from the
Father, but in the act of personal derivation from the Father or, in other
words, in the Son as deriving from the Father. In this way the notes, so to
speak, of ‘receptivity’ and ‘affirmativity’ of being on the part of the Son
and the Holy Spirit are combined. ‘Reconduction’ indicates the eternal
foundation of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the person of the Father
as their origin, both as the reality from which they come (‘receptivity’)
and as the reality to which they are led back, which they ‘recognise’ and
‘accept’ (‘affirmativity’). In order to avoid dividing the Trinity into two
‘moments’, it should be added that the idea of reconduction suggests that
of the fulfilment of the being of the Son and the Holy Spirit, as well as of
the Father himself, given the reciprocity of relationship inherent in their
name. In this sense, reconduction could indicate the ‘concluding’ term
of the movement of trinitarian being.
And so, the origin and fulfilment of the Trinity is the Father (‘from
whom it is derived and to whom it refers back [ἀνάγεται]’), that is a person
who does not merge in himself the otherness of the Son and the Holy
Spirit (οὐχ ὡς συναλείφεσθαι),228 but constitutes for it the ontological

224.
Cf. ibid., p. 156.
225.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A).
226.
The inverted commas for the terms acknowledgement and response
indicate that they are not used according to a technical meaning.
227.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 143.
228.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 (PG 36, 476B).
150 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

principle of existing in relational reciprocity (ἄλληλα σχέσεως).229 As

Zizioulas points out, it is the other, not as nature, ἄλλο, but as a person,
ἄλλος, that is the purpose of life.230
In the light of what has been observed in relation to the movement
of the return of the persons of the Son and the Holy Spirit to that of the
Father, is it not possible to understand this presentation of monarchy as
a representation of the ‘completed’ image of the trinitarian reality caused
by the Father, rather than as an understanding on the ‘moral’ level?
Zizioulas dwells very little on the reconduction of the Son and the Holy
Spirit to the Father, yet it is precisely this dogmatic aspect that gives full
prominence to the notion of person. On the one hand, if the ontological
causality of the Father is not understood as involving the agreement of
the intellect and the will, one could easily think of a form of dictatorship
of the Father. On the other hand, the Father’s ontological causality
means that the will is also understood on the ontological level, before
being understood on the moral level; moreover, the fact that the will is
concomitant with nature pushes us towards this line of interpretation.
This examination of Zizioulas’ reading confirms Zizioulas’ intuitions
about the centrality in Nazianzen’s teaching of the doctrine of the
monarchy of the Father, which guarantees the unity of God according to
the substance. Two aspects, however, seem to escape Zizioulas’ attention;
in fact, they would better ground his reading: Nazianzen’s reflection on
the glory of God, which consists in the Father’s offer to the Son and
the Holy Spirit of participation in his being uncaused, and Nazianzen’s
reflection on the return of the Son and the Holy Spirit to the Father.

Gregory of Nyssa: The Focus on the Terms Aitios and ek tou

Aitiou
Gregory of Nyssa also contributes significantly to Zizioulas’ reflections.
Nyssen devoted much of his theological activity to the trinitarian mystery
and brought to maturity the reflections of his brother Basil. Thanks to
his particular speculative aptitude, Nyssen focused his attention, with
regard to the generation of the Son and the procession of the Holy Spirit,
on the terms ‘cause’ and ‘caused’ and tried to understand the notion of
causality also in reference to the relationship between the Son and the
Holy Spirit. I shall conclude Part One with Zizioulas’ reading of Gregory
of Nyssa and, beginning with a passage from Contra Eunomium, discuss
the question of the ontological principiality of the Father. From this there
emerges a meaning, not particularly emphasised by Zizioulas, which

229.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.9 (PG 36, 141C).
230.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 68; Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep. 101.4 (PG 37, 180AB).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 151

constitutes, in my opinion, a valid contribution to the understanding of

the ontological freedom of the Father and the Son.

Deepening the Notion of Hypostatic Causality with

Reference to the Trinitarian Taxis
The question of the ontological principle in God according to Nyssen is
presented by Zizioulas with particular reference to Nyssen’s consideration
of the trinitarian taxis and the difference between generation and
inspiration.
For Zizioulas, Nyssen is fully embedded in the Cappadocian
trinitarian perspective, especially that of Basil, his elder brother:231 this
is attested by his full adherence to the doctrine of the three hypostaseis232
that hypostasise nature233 in relation to their modes of existence.234
Zizioulas highlights how Nyssen strongly emphasises the relationality
of the divine person by his affirmation that in one name there is another
implied235 and the affirmation of the Father as the ‘One God’, as the ‘one
cause’ of the Trinity’s being.236

231.
His testimony is especially important if one follows Moreschini in
believing that Nazianzen had little influence on him (C. Moreschini, I
Padri Cappadoci, p. 278).
232.
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos: Ex Communibus Notionibus, 2 (PG 45,
177f.); ‘Relational Ontology’, p. 148.
233.
Zizioulas cites the teaching on the non-existence of a naked nature also in
Nyssen. Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I (PG 45); ‘Relational
Ontology’, p. 151.
234.
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I.37 (PG 45, 337); «Ἀπὸ τὸ
προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου,
p. 91. Also for Nyssen, as Zizioulas observes, only the mode of existence is
accessible; cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, XII (PG 45, 964B); X
(PG 45, 840D-41A); XII (PG 45, 960BD); ‘Relational Ontology’, p. 149.
235.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, pp. 122, 126; Gregory of Nyssa, Contra
Eunomium, IV.8 (PG 45, 669C). See also ibid., X (PG 45, 844C), where Nyssen
states that the Son secured being through relationship with the Father. This
perspective, according to Zizioulas, makes the use of the term atomon for
the Trinity misleading, since atomon designates the concrete, specific and
indivisible existence of ousia and, as such, it is more appropriate to use it in
the case of the human person; cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos, 2 (PG
45, 177D); ‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, pp. 174–75.
236.
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos, 5 (PG 45, 180BC). Moreschini also notes
that Nyssen uses only the terms ‘cause’ and ‘caused’, and not the Basilian
terms ‘paternity’ and ‘fi liality’ (Moreschini, I Padri Cappadoci, p. 281).
152 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

With regard to Nyssen’s particular themes, Zizioulas dwells first of all

on the connection made between the notions of cause and person. He
cites the following passage from the letter-treatise Ad Ablabium:

While we confess the invariable character of the divine

substance, we do not deny the difference in relation to the
cause and what is caused, from which we can only understand
that each person is distinct from the other … in speaking
of the cause and what is derived from the cause, we do not
indicate by these words the nature but the difference in the
mode of being.237

For Nyssen too, then, causality is to be understood on a hypostatic

level. In this regard, Zizioulas quotes another passage from Ad Ablabium:

we do not deny the difference according to what causes and

what is caused, and from this alone we can conceive that the
being of the one is distinct from the other, solely because we
believe that the one is the cause and the other from the cause,
and in the case of what is produced by the cause we still
recognise a further difference. One derives immediately
from the fi rst, another derives through (dia) the one who
derives immediately from the first, so that the prerogative
of being the Only-begotten remains undoubtedly with the
Son, and it is not rejected that the Spirit derives from the
Father, since the mediating position of the Son does not

What Zizioulas does not dwell on is the affirmation of the Three as the divine
substance (Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, II [PG 45, 489AB]), of
God as substance and of the monad as the Three considered according to
substance. Difference, as Nyssen explains, is connected with the Trinity,
whereas identity is connected with the monad; see Ad Graecos, 3 (GNOD
1893) (the passage is expunged by Migne). Moreschini observes that such
a view of the monad is peculiar to Marcellus of Ancyra and reflects the
influence of the latter on Nyssen’s early period (cf. GNOD 1892). One can
conclude that the concept of monad is not unambiguous, but this does not
detract from the fact that some passages refer to the Father.
237.
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 21–22 (PG 45, 133BC), Zizioulas’ italics,
from ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 187; cf. Lectures
in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 79, 81.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 153

mean that the natural relation (physikēs) of the Spirit to the

Father is excluded.238

Here Nyssen reiterates the Cappadocian teaching of the Father as

the sole cause of the Son and the Holy Spirit,239 stating also that the Son
comes immediately from the Father, the Holy Spirit comes from the
Father, but through the Son.240 In Zizioulas’ line of interpretation, this
teaching recalls, and in my opinion makes explicit, that of Nazianzen
on the ‘monad [which] “from the beginning”, moving towards the dyad,
stopped at the triad’,241 as if to suggest the ‘arising’ of the Trinity from
the Father as cause of the Son and from there as cause of the Holy Spirit
through the mediation of the Son.
What interests Zizioulas is to discover how reflection on the
trinitarian taxis involves the reality of causality,242 understood as
monocausality, attributed to the Father alone, to which the monotheism
of the Christian faith is connected.243 This point is indeed confirmed by
Nyssen, who traces the affirmation of the one God back to the fact that
there is only one cause of the Trinity, namely the Father, and to the fact
that the Father is the cause insofar as he is a relational being, that is,
insofar as he is a ‘person’:

For one and the same is the person of the Father, from whom
the Son is begotten and from whom the Holy Spirit proceeds.
Therefore, we say precisely and frankly that there is one God,

238.
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 21 (PG 45, 133BC); cited by Zizioulas in
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, pp. 193–94, omitting an
aside on the difference between ‘cause’ and ‘that which is caused’.
239.
This point is beyond dispute (cf., for example, Kelly, Early Christian
Doctrines, p. 262).
240.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 193; Lectures in
Christian Dogmatics, pp. 80, 82; ‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’,
in The One and the Many, p. 13.
241.
Διὰ τοῦτο μονὰς ἀπ᾽ἀρχῆς εἰς δυάδα κινηθεῖσα, μέχρι Τριάδος ἔστη
(Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 [PG 36, 76B]; cf. 23.8 [PG 35, 1160C]).
242.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203.
243.
The way of understanding the Filioque, for example, that affirmed two
causes – rather than simply two sources or principles – undermined the
monotheism of biblical faith (cf. ‘One Single Source’, p. 43.
154 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

who is the one cause, together with those who have been
caused by him, since this one cause subsists with them.244

Zizioulas also addresses the question of the interpretation of a

difficult passage of Nyssen, according to which the Son seems to precede
the Holy Spirit, by reason of cause (κατὰ τὀν τῆς αἰτὶας λὀγον).245 In this
regard Zizioulas wonders whether one should read this expression as
a glaring contradiction with what has been argued by Nyssen in Ad
Ablabium or as referring not to the Son but to the process of causality
itself. In other words, does the Holy Spirit come after the Only-Begotten
insofar as the latter is his cause or, as Zizioulas believes, according
to the trinitarian taxis, inherent in the causal process that knows its
only ontological principle in the Father? Zizioulas’ solution is amply
supported by the text and safeguards the unity and internal coherence
of Nyssen’s teaching.246 It does not, therefore, remove the attribution of
the Father’s monocausality: ‘Strictly speaking we describe one God who
is the sole cause, together with those who are caused by him, since this
one cause subsists with them.’247 The one God is clearly the Father, since
he is the sole cause of those caused, that is, of the Son and the Holy
Spirit, and he is the cause that subsists with those caused, because of
his relational being or, in Zizioulan terms, because of his personal, not
individual, being. Ultimately, what is being said is that the Father causes
the hypostasisation, the mode of existence, of the divine nature.248 A
passage quoted by Zizioulas from Nyssen, supposedly on the assertion
of the Son and the Holy Spirit deriving substance from God, is actually
inaccurate, both in its bibliographical reference and in the translation
of the term ‘substance’. According to Zizioulas’ translation, the Holy
Spirit is:

244.
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos, 5 (PG 45, 180C).
245.
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I.42 (PG 45, 464); ‘Pneumatology
and the Importance of the Person’, p. 194.
246.
This point is confirmed by Kelly. He takes up another passage of Nyssen,
similar to the one considered by Zizioulas, which states that the Son
is related to the Spirit as ‘cause to effect, and uses the analogy of a torch
imparting its light first to another torch and then through it to a third’
(Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 262; cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra
Eunomium, I.42 [PG 45, 464]).
247.
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Graecos, 5 (PG 45, 180C).
248.
Cf. ‘Relational Ontology’, p. 149; Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 21–22
(PG 45, 133–36).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 155

in his nature uncreated in unity with the Father and the Son
and, on the other hand, is distinguished from them by his
own proper characteristics (γνωρίσμασι). … One with the
Father in that he is uncreated, he is distinct from him in that
he is not a Father; one with the Son because both are uncreated
and deriving their substance from God.249

This quotation is taken not from section 22 but from section 36 of the
first book of Contra Eunomium where its final part reads: ‘in possessing
the cause of their existence from the God of the universe’.250 On the
basis of the literal translation, it can be observed that the derivation of
existence and not of nature is affirmed. While it is true that the causality
of the Father is referred to the ‘how’ of being/existence and thus to the
hypostatic level, rather than to the ‘what’, i.e. the substance, it is also
true that the notion of substance remains relevant to understanding
the personal derivation from the Father. For Nyssen, in negative terms,
personal derivation takes place without any division of nature;251
in positive terms, personal derivation takes place as a reciprocal
relationship (τῇ πρὸς ἄλληλα σχέσει),252 exhibiting its connection with

249.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 183; Zizioulas gives the
reference as: Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I.22 (PG 45, 355f.).
250.
[K]αὶ ἐν τῷ τὴν αἰτίαν τῆς ὑπάρξεως ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ τῶν ὅλων ἔχειν (Gregory
of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I.36 [PG 45, 336D]). Note the expression
Θεοῦ τῶν ὅλων ἔχειν (‘God of the universe’) used by Gregory also on other
occasions to designate the Father.
251.
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 15 (PG 45, 125); ‘The Trinity and
Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159. Cause, caused and the
one who comes from the cause manifest communion in nature (Gregory
of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 22 [PG 45, 133–36]).
252.
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I (PG 45, 297C). Maspero, who
has studied Gregory of Nyssa’s notion of σχέσις in depth, observes how
the Cappadocians, and Nyssen in particular, pass from the Aristotelian
relation understood as pros ti to the Stoic one understood as relation (cf. G.
Maspero, ‘L’ontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa e Agostino d’Ippona’,
p. 67). In summary, with Nyssen once σχέσις (which is etymologically
connected with ἔχειν) has been inserted into the immanence of the one
divine substance, it can no longer be interpreted in terms of having, but
only in terms of being (cf. G. Maspero, ‘Unità e relazione: la schesis nella
dottrina trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa’, Path 11, no. 2 (2012), pp. 301–26, at
p. 323). Therefore, ‘to be of the same nature means to be united by means of
156 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the divine nature. If ‘Son’ indicates the relationship with ‘Father’, it also
indicates ‘affinity according to nature’,253 and Zizioulas is well aware that
the Father ‘ensures the equality of the three persons in terms of deity’.254
It is in this light that we must understand some of his statements in
which he seems to clearly separate otherness from affinity/equality, as
when he writes that ‘the person of the Father does not cause sameness
(ousia connotes something common, i.e., sameness, within the Trinity),
but otherness, i.e., personhood’.255
Another aspect needs to be mentioned, Nyssen’s trinitarian vision
centred on the Father as the one God, as the sole cause of the Son and
the Holy Spirit, along with the concepts of unity of operation and
perichōrēsis. Zizioulas shows that he is aware of this,256 although he does
not pay particular attention to it.257
With regard to the unity of operation, Nyssen insists on the fact that
not only at the extra-trinitarian level, but also at the intra-trinitarian
level, the unity of the ousia follows from the unity of operation.258
This operation begins with the Father, proceeds through the Son and
is completed in the Holy Spirit. The unity/unity of operation is due
precisely to the fact that the Son and the Holy Spirit have the Father as
their ontological principle. In this sense, the trinitarian taxis caused by
the Father causes persons who, precisely because they are caused, play a
constitutive role in the definition of trinitarian being.

a relation that does not distinguish the terms by nature; rather, it identifies
them with nature itself’ (ibid., p. 322).
253.
[T]ὸ κατὰ τὴν φύσιν οἰκεῖον (Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, I
[PG 45, 341D]).
254.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 139.
255.
Ibid., p. 130.
256.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 19; ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and
Otherness, pp. 106–7.
257.
With regard to this, Zizioulas states that some theologians have criticised
his proposal because of the patrocentrism that characterises it, which is
considered incompatible with any perichoretic or homoousian vision. Cf.
E. Peterson, Der Monotheismus als politisches Problem (Leipzig: Hegner,
1935); J. Moltmann, The Trinity and the Kingdom of God (Munich: Chr.
Kaiser 1981); referred to in ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 143.
258.
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 15 (PG 45, 125). This point is well
grasped, for example, by Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines, p. 266.
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 157

With regard to perichōrēsis, it should be noted that Nyssen’s trinitarian

conception closely links the personal, substantial, operational and
perichoretic aspects. In fact, he states: ‘The principle of all things is the
Father: but it has been proclaimed that the Son is also in this principle,
since he is by nature that which the principle is. For God is the beginning
and the logos that is in the beginning is God’.259 This is an affirmation
of great importance, since the Father is defined as the principle of the
trinitarian being which holds within itself, as its constitutive aspect,
the caused, the Son (and this also applies to the Holy Spirit). From this
it follows that, because of the perichoretic unity caused by the Father,
the Son, insofar as caused by the Father and subsisting in the Father, is
identified with the attributes of the Father, except for that of paternity.260
This understanding of the Father is in harmony with Basil, with
regard to being-with the Son and cause of the Son, and with Nazianzen,
with regard to the involvement of the Son, as begotten, in the glory of the
uncaused being. Finally, this can be traced back to what Zizioulas says
about the Father as the principle of the Son and the Holy Spirit as person.

The Notion of the ‘Best’ (Kreitton) in Reference to the Father

The following passage from Gregory of Nyssa explains his teaching
on the causation of the hypostasis as rooted in the subsistence of the
Father. The Son:

is incorruptible inasmuch as he is in the incorruptibility of

the Father, and is good inasmuch as he is in his goodness, and
is powerful inasmuch as he is in his power, and since he is in
each of those realities which are thought to be in the Father
according to the notion of the best [τὸ κρεῖττον], he is surely
that reality, so he is surely also eternal in the eternity of the
Father.261

259.
Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, VIII (PG 45, 776D-77A). ‘Principle’
and ‘beginning’ are both renderings of ἀρχή. Maspero comments: ‘the
being in … is given in the most absolute substantial identity, according
to a reinterpretation that recognises an immanent dimension of the arché
itself’ (Maspero, ‘L’ontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa e Agostino
d’Ippona’, p. 68).
260.
Cf. Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, VIII (PG 45, 772C-73A);
Maspero, ‘L’ontologia trinitaria di Gregorio di Nissa e Agostino d’Ippona’,
p. 69. In this sense, Nyssen states that the power of the Father is the Son.
261.
Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, VIII (PG 45, 772CD).
158 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

According to Nyssen, the natural divine properties – incorruptibility,

goodness, power, eternity – are proper to the Father, the Son and the
Holy Spirit. In this sense, divinity is attributed unequivocally and fully to
all three, against any possible subordinationist interpretation. However,
these properties are thought of according to the notion of the ‘best’ – τὸ
κρεῖττον – in reference to the Father.262 This ‘superiority’ is explained on
the basis that the Son ‘comes from the Father and is seen in the eternity
of the Father’.263 We therefore have the notion of the ‘superior’, which
relates to the Father, connected with the predication of the mode of
existence of natural properties. If it is true that the Cappadocians affirm
that the Father is greater only with regard to the hypostatic property,
this involves precisely the predication of the natural properties. They
exist in their original, principial way in the Father, and in them the Son
and the Holy Spirit are rooted. This superiority, which concerns the
way of preaching the natural properties of the Father, is unthinkable, in
fact, without the consideration of the causative movement proper to the
Father and without the persons caused according to the same natural
divine properties of the Father.
We therefore have here the affirmation that the natural properties,
proper to all three, are rooted in the Father, that is, in a particular mode
of existence, which, by virtue of its relational constitution, means that
Eunomius’ thesis, which strictly identifies ingenerateness with nature,
is excluded. To be precise, the superiority of the Father is explained in
relation to the ontological principiality proper to him, and in relation to
the – so to speak – ‘perichoretic’ aspect of natural properties: the Son ‘is
incorruptible insofar as he is in the incorruptibility of the Father’.264 If
the primariness of the reality of the Father is affirmed, which concerns
hypostatic causality, the latter is not considered detached from the level
of natural properties, since the Father constitutes the principal mode of
their existence. Although Zizioulas makes no specific mention of this,
since he clearly distinguishes the derivation of persons from the level
of nature, it follows from what has been said that the Son derives from
the Father, in the sense that the natural property – for example – of the
incorruptibility of the Son is rooted in that of the Father. Generation,
the placing of otherness outside oneself, is therefore understood as a
‘perichoretic’ rooting which concerns natural properties. I believe that
on this basis the Nicene expression, not abandoned by the Cappadocians,

262.
Ibid. (PG 45, 772CD).
263.
Ibid. (PG 45, 772D).
264.
Ὡς οὖν ἐν τῷ ἀφθάρτῳ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὢν ἄφθαρτός ἐστι (ibid. [PG 45, 772C]).
Data Learned from the Lex Orandi and Patristics 159

‘from the substance of the Father’ can be understood in ‘personalist’

terms. Furthermore, it is stated here, or at least implied, that, while
the Son is not the ontological principle that causes the incorruptibility
of the Father, he does constitute it: the incorruptibility of the Father
has the Son as its constitutive element, and the Son is incorruptible
insofar as he is in it. Ultimately, in the Father the natural properties
are predicated according to the notion of the ‘best’, in that he is the
principal mode of their existence and the persons caused are ‘rooted’
in them.
If we continue to follow Nyssen’s reasoning, it is possible to deepen
our understanding of the superiority of the Father, focusing on a point
already suggested by Nazianzen – the Son participates in the glory of
the one who is without a cause265 – or rather the affirmation of the Son
as the one who is in the unoriginated being of the Father. Nyssen writes
that the Son, ‘since he is in the principlelessness (ἀνάρχῳ) of the Father,
has no beginning of days’.266 First of all, is unoriginated existence, in
which the Son is said to be, to be understood in a temporal sense or in
the sense of personal derivation? One might assume that the ἀνάρχῳ
referred to the Father is a temporal principle, but from the context, and
from what has been said so far about the meaning attributed by the
Cappadocians to the term archē, one would have to opt for the causal
meaning. Moreover, if this were not the case, why distinguish between
lack of principle – ἀνάρχῳ – in reference to the Father, and principle of
days – ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν – in reference to the Son? Yes, Nyssen’s reasoning
concerns the temporal eternity of the Father and the Son, but this is
understood within the framework of the affirmation of the Father as
principleless principle of the Son: the Son ‘comes from the Father, and
is seen in the eternity (ἀϊδιότητι) of the Father’.267 A distinction is thus
made between the ἀϊδιότητι – the temporal eternity – and the ἀνάρχῳ –
which seems to indicate the personal principlelessness. Therefore, if
the Son is said to be eternal insofar as he derives from the eternity –
ἀϊδιότητι – of the Father, it is because he comes from the Father, that is,
from the principleless – ἀνάρχῳ – existence of the Father, in the sense of
personal derivation. If the eternity, in the temporal sense, of the Father
can therefore be traced back to a question of existence which generates

265.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.11 (PG 36, 89A).
266.
[O]ὕτω καὶ ἐν τῷ ἀνάρχῳ τοῦ Πατρὸς ὢν ἀρχὴν ἡμερῶν οὐκ ἔχει (Gregory
of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, VIII [PG 45, 772D).
267.
[Ἐ]κ τοῦ Πατρός ἐστι καὶ ἐν τῇ ἀϊδιότητι τοῦ Πατρὸς καθορᾶται (ibid. [PG
45, 772D]).
160 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

principlelessly, that of the Son is also traced back to the hypostatic

principlelessness of the Father, from which he derives. This fact should
be borne in mind, since it is of a certain importance in evaluating
Zizioulas’ proposal regarding the ontological freedom of the causative
person, that of the Father, and of the caused person, that of the Son and
the Holy Spirit.
 Part Two

Zizioulas’ Theological Development:

The Father, Free Cause of Being as
Personhood-Freedom

In Part Two I shall examine Zizioulas’ theological development, bearing

in mind, in view of the complexity of Cappadocian thought, a point
argued by Miroslav Volf and Basilio Petrà, namely that ‘the question of
Zizioulas’ fidelity to the thought of the Cappadocians is separable from
the intrinsic question of his theological vision’.1
Our aim shall be to study the developments of Zizioulas’ thought with
respect both to the Fathers and his own reflections, in order to identify
and evaluate on the one hand what represents a simple explication of
what is implicit in the teaching of the Fathers2 and on the other what
represents novelty in his thought. In other words, on the basis of the
distinction made by Ioannis Spiteris between novelty of language and
novelty of content in Zizioulas,3 I shall examine how Zizioulas’ thought
translates patristic dogmatic data into the categories of modern thought
and how it deepens them.

1.
B. Petrà, ‘La “libera” monarchia del Padre e le sue ambiguità: Considerazioni
sulla dottrina trinitaria di Ioannis Zizioulas’, Path 11, no. 2 (2012), pp. 475–
98, at p. 488; cf. M. Volf, After Our Likeness: The Church as the Image of the
Trinity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 75.
2.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 108.
3.
If for Spiteris the novelty of language is easily ascertainable, that of content
represents, however, a novelty more in continuity than in discontinuity with
the Fathers (cf. Y. Spiteris, ‘La dottrina trinitaria nella teologia ortodossa:
162 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

It will be seen how the question of the ontological causality of the

Father is elaborated with reference to the notions of person – as relational
otherness – and ontological freedom. It will be seen that in the idea of
the Father as a person, as a free being, as the origin of free persons,
and therefore of communion, consists the main aspect of Zizioulas’
theological development,4 as can be seen in his words:

(a) There is no true being without communion. Nothing

exists as an ‘individual’, conceivable in itself. Communion is
an ontological category.

(b) Communion which does not come from a ‘hypostasis’,

that is, a concrete and free person, and which does not lead
to ‘hypostases’, that is, concrete and free persons, is not an
‘image’ of the being of God. The person cannot exist without
communion; but every form of communion which denies or
supresses the person is inadmissible.5

In particular, chapter three will examine the Zizioulan understanding

of the person of the Father, as the personal principle of the One and
Triune being of God. Chapter four will examine how the principle
of personal being – which is the Father as person – is constitutive of
personal being, and therefore of freedom, both at the trinitarian level –
in the case of the Son and the Holy Spirit, respectively – and at the level
of creation, in the case of man.

Autori e prospettive’, in A. Amato [ed.], La Trinità in contesto [Rome: LAS,

1993], pp. 45–69, here at p. 47).
4.
Chrysostom Koutloumousianos confirms this: ‘[A]re we justified in saying that
the very being of the Persons is communion or the absolute freedom of being
other, which, in turn, is one and the same with eros and agape, identified, in
the final analysis, with the hypostasis of the Father? By contrast, all the Fathers
make clear that the Persons as well as their mode of existence, being uncreated,
remain behind the borders of cognition and language’ (Koutloumousianos,
The One and the Three, p. 12). Koutloumousianos’ reservations with regard to
Zizioulas’ theological developments refer (a) to what he sees as a lack of respect
for the apophatic principle that the Fathers maintained towards the divine
persons and their modes of existence, and (b) to a Zizioulan patristic reading
influenced by motifs proper to existentialist philosophy.
5.
‘Introduction’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 14 (trans. Being as Communion, p. 18).
 Chapter Three

The Father: ‘The Ultimate Reality

of God’s Personal Existence’

This chapter will examine Zizioulas’ understanding of the Father as

the primary ontological principle of divine existence, understood as
personal being and ontological freedom. After having dealt with the
freedom of the Father’s causativity, I shall go on to examine how it is
specified in reference to the triune and one being of God.

The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being

For Zizioulas, ‘Freedom is the “cause” of being’.1 The fi rst aspect to be
clarified, regarding the Father as the personal cause of the trinitarian
being, concerns the freedom of this causativity. It will also make it
possible to clarify how Zizioulas understands the notion of cause
and person. The notion of freedom, repeatedly taken up by Zizioulas,
is presented in an asystematic way and from different angles; it is
also because of this that his thought has been exposed to frequent
objections. I shall deal here with the understanding of freedom in
reference to the Father and, in the next chapter, with freedom
in reference to the person caused.

1.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 164.
164 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Freedom for/of
In one of his most recent writings, Zizioulas states that ‘in God there is no
freedom from. … There is only freedom for’,2 since, as he has previously
stated, ‘we are not free with regard to someone but for someone other than
ourselves’.3 For Zizioulas, therefore, it is freedom for the fundamental
meaning of freedom, although he also speaks, only in a logical sense, of
freedom from.4 Freedom for is connected to freedom of, in the sense that
freedom for someone – understood as ecstatic freedom – coincides with
freedom to be oneself – understood as hypostatic freedom.5 We examine
below the three meanings attributed to freedom – for, of and from – in
relation to the Father.

Freedom as Existence for the Other

The fundamental thesis of the ontology of the person in Zizioulas is
that the person is that mode of existence of nature, in which the ecstatic
(movement towards the other in order to affirm the other as other) and
the hypostatic (being self) coincide,6 and in which nature is hypostasised,
not according to laws of ontological necessity. This mode of existence of
the person is understood in relation to the process of causal derivation
from the Father. In this regard, Basilio Petrà observes that for Zizioulas
the notion of divine person indicates:

simply the particular coexistence of two dimensions

(hypostaticity and ecstaticity, originally non-individual and
unconscious) in the mode of being of the divine nature.
Now, since these two dimensions constitute the being-person
(or personhood) of every divine person, and personhood is
given by Zizioulas as caused by the (free) ecstatic process, if the
2.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 199.
3.
‘Communion et altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse 184 (1994), p. 32;
the English edition changes ‘quelqu’un’ (‘someone’) to ‘something’:
‘Communion and Otherness’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 38, no. 4
(1994), pp. 347–61, at p. 359.
4.
Zizioulas’ understanding of freedom as freedom for has been clarified
and emphasised over time. In the earliest writings the emphasis seems to
fall more on freedom from, as freedom from necessity, as is the case in
substantialist ontologies or personalist ontologies with reference to creation.
5.
‘Owing to its ontological character trinitarian freedom is not simply ek-static
but in being ek-static it is also hypostatic’ (‘Trinitarian Freedom’, pp. 197–98).
6.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 112.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 165

direction of the timeless ecstatic-communal process is lost, the

divine persons inevitably all become equal and intrinsically
indistinguishable, rendering the biblical-liturgical experience
of the Church meaningless.7

Therefore, if the person is hypostatic in being ecstatic and as such

represents the hypostasisation of being and even more so ‘the ek-stasis
of being’,8 it follows that being means being in relation.9 In this sense,
beings ‘emerge from a constant movement of relationality’,10 also
specified as ‘movement towards communion’,11 caused by the Father.
With reference to the ‘movement of relationality’, it is necessary
to clarify first how Zizioulas understands the notion of relationship.
Zizioulas does not elaborate an in-depth reflection on this notion,
although it is central for him. It can be deduced, however, that relation

7.
Petrà, ‘La “libera” monarchia del Padre e le sue ambiguità’, p. 497. As Petrà
observes, one aspect not considered in the understanding of the notion of
the divine person is that of consciousness (cf. ibid., p. 490). Zizioulas justifies
this actual gap on the basis of his conviction that for the Greek Fathers
attributing psychological faculties to divine persons leads to projections
of creaturely characteristics in God (cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics,
p. 69) and that the notion of person is eschatological. The fact remains that,
as Petrà again observes, the notion of person thus loses ‘any possibility of
being interpreted in humanly configurable terms’ (‘La “libera” monarchia
del Padre e le sue ambiguità’, p. 497). In ‘On Being a Person’, Zizioulas seems
to give consciousness some attention. In this essay he sketches his ontology
of the person from the question ‘who am I?’, and, analysing each of the three
terms, to which he gives constitutive value for the being of the person, he
states with regard to the first – who – that it represents ‘a call of and for
consciousness’ (‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 100).
Having said that, however, it can be argued that such a notion is, in fact,
absent; it seems rather to be somehow implicit in that of will, or, better, of
willing, as well as in those of love and freedom as personal properties, on
which Zizioulas particularly insists.
8.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 213.
9.
‘[R]elating … is being itself’ (‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and
Otherness, p. 112).
10.
‘Relational Ontology’, p. 150.
11.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 213.
166 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

refers first of all to ekstasis, as a movement of a particular being aimed at

affirming another particular being as alterity, and which is ontologically
constitutive of both.12 Zizioulas talks about the relationship, often using
the patristic term schesis, which indicates ‘the state in which the Son is in
relation to the Father or the Father in relation to the Son’13 and which, in
the case of the Trinity, is constitutive of the identity of the divine person.
If in patristic terms the names of the divine persons indicate a schesis,14
in Zizioulan terms, the person is an identity that emerges from the
relationship.15 In this sense, the relationship is characterised by reciprocity
(the Father and the Son are reciprocally related to each other,16 since the
relationship between Father and Son is ‘mutually constitutive’)17 although
asymmetrical (only the Father causes the Son and the Holy Spirit, and
only the Son and the Holy Spirit are caused by the Father).18
If, however, in his first paper Zizioulas identifies personhood with
relation/schesis, stating that ‘personhood is a schesis’,19 he later specifies
that ‘the persons “are not relations, but concrete particulars in relation to
one another”’,20 thus distancing himself from the Augustinian conception,
traced back to Plotinus and Porphyry, of the Three as relations that have

12.
Here the question arises as to whether, and how, this notion can be applied
to created beings, whether animate or not. If relation is linked to the person,
and thus to the affirmation of the other as other, through the exodus of the
self, one could not properly speak of relation with reference to the above
categories.
13.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.16 (PG 36, 96A).
14.
Cf. ibid. It will be seen that Zizioulas specifies how each of the Three can be
understood on the basis of its relation to the other two persons.
15.
Cf. ‘Relational Ontology’, p. 150.
16.
Cf. ‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, p. 174; John Damascene, De Fide
Orthodoxa, 8 (PG 94, 829A) (the chapter is eight and not fourteen, as
Zizioulas reports); cf. also Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 31.9 (PG 36,
141C). Zizioulas, faithful to the apophaticism of the Fathers on this point,
does not address the question of whether, and how, the reciprocity of three
can/should be understood (a kind of ‘ternary’ reciprocity).
17.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 26.
18.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 143.
19.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 240; cf. also ibid., p. 248. In one of his later writings he returned to this
idea (cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 306).
20.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 137, quoting Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian
Theology, p. 139.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 167

real subsistence.21 However, given the coincidence between the ecstatic and
the hypostatic, one can conclude that, for Zizioulas, if the person and the
relation indicate reversed realities, and the person ontologically possesses a
relational character, the person is identified with the relation and indicates
the relation.
The relationship, both in the case of the Trinity itself and in the case of
the Trinity in relation to creation, is one of love and communion, precisely
because it indicates that mutual constitution of two particular beings.22
In the case of the Father, this constitution is understood primarily as the
‘capacity to embrace and contain’,23 and is characterised by ontological
causality. Zizioulas writes that ‘relations are causal: the Father causes
the Son and the Spirit to exist as hypostases, i.e., as specific identities
emerging through relations’.24 If Zizioulas states that ‘relations are
causal’, that ‘relation causes otherness’25 (as well as communion, which
‘does not threaten otherness, it generates it’),26 this does not mean that it
is not, in the last instance, the person who causes otherness. The Father,
by virtue of the causal-relational character of His person, is identified
with the relationship and as such causes otherness.
For Zizioulas, being in relation coincides with ontological freedom,
that is, with that movement towards the other that is not constrained by
any necessity, and love consists in the ecstasy of communion in which
the other is free to be himself. In the Trinity, this relational mode of
existence, proper to the divine nature, is primarily due to the person
of the Father, insofar as, by its hypostatic property of incausate cause,
it represents the ‘ultimate reality of God’s personal existence’,27 as
relational existence and therefore as ontological freedom.

21.
Cf. ‘Relational Ontology’, p. 147.
22.
Zizioulas points out that in the case of the God-creation relationship, the
latter constitutes (not causes) the identity of Christ; cf. ‘Ecclesiological
Presuppositions of the Holy Eucharist’, in The One and the Many, p. 73.
23.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 116. Zizioulas cites the patristic teaching on the
Father as omni-embracing, containing all things that he has created
(Irenaeus of Lyon, Adversus Haereses, II.I.5 [PG 7/1, 712]; Theophilus
of Antioch, Ad Autolycum, I.4 [PG 6, 1029]). This teaching is also brought
back by Zizioulas to the intra-trinitarian level.
24.
‘Relational Ontology’, p. 150.
25.
Ibid.
26.
‘[N]e menace pas l’altérité, elle la génère’ (‘Communion et altérité’, p. 28).
27.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 134.
168 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

If for Zizioulas the fundamental meaning of freedom, here

considered in reference to the Father, is that of freedom for, its
fundamental meaning is specified precisely as love: ‘Love is identified
with its ontological freedom.’28 In virtue of this, he states that love
‘becomes the ontological category par excellence’.29 It is not by chance
that he talks about an ontology of freedom, of otherness, of the person,
of communion, as well as of an ‘ontology of love’.30 Stating that what
hypostasises God is the freedom of the Father or the love of the Father
has the same meaning. Love/freedom for the other is in fact understood
as a movement towards the other, as an affirmation of the other as a
unique particularity. Before seeing in what sense this movement of love
is a ‘movement of affirmation of the other’,31 another aspect needs to be
clarified.
For Zizioulas to be is to be in relation, in the sense that ‘to be is to exist
for the other’.32 The Father’s freedom is freedom to affirm otherness, in
the sense of existing for the other:33 his freedom – so to speak – is a ‘pro-
existence’. It is described as an exit from the self, an ekstasis ‘which leads
to a transcendence of the boundaries of the “self” and thus to freedom’,34
as a ‘a perpetual exodus from the self, not in order to meet an already
existing “other” (individualism) but to affirm the “other” as a unique

28.
Ἡ ἀγάπη ταυτίζεται μὲ τὴν ὀντολογικὴν ἐλευθερίαν («Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον
εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 97).
29.
γίνεται ἡ κατ᾽ἐξοχὴν ὀντολογικὴ κατηγορία (ibid.).
30.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 108.
31.
‘[U]n mouvement d’affirmation de l’autre’ (‘Communion et altérité’, p. 32).
32.
‘[T]o be is to exist for the other’ (‘Relational ontology’, p. 150). Given the
context of this statement, namely the ontological character of love that
allows the other to be as the other, it can be inferred that the underlying
Greek preposition δία is clearly to be understood as ‘for’. This does not
exclude that δία may also be understood, secondarily, as ‘by means of’,
in the sense of ‘in virtue of the relation with’. This will be explored in the
following pages.
33.
This clear and effective formulation appears only in 2010, confirming our
thesis that Zizioulas’ personalism is refined over time, also thanks to the
consideration of the criticisms made against it.
34.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 213.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 169

being’.35 This implies giving ‘priority to the Other over the Self’.36 Hence,
freedom is both what initiates the movement of transcendence of the
self and the relational ontological status that follows.37 Zizioulas goes
so far as to formulate a definition of existence that does not relate to
an individual, but to persons in freedom: ‘Existence is the function of
persons acting in freedom’,38 so that the existence of the Father, like that
of the Son and the Holy Spirit, has as a constitutive aspect the other
two free persons. In the case of God, and specifically of the Father,
the movement of transcendence from the self and the relational status
that follows coincide,39 since, if the existence of the Father coincides
with existence for the other, this existence does not only produce the
affirmation of the otherness of the Son or the Holy Spirit, but also of
the Father: the latter comes out of the self to affirm the other and so he
too is constituted as other. From this we see that the self-affirmation of

35.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 197. It is clear that, if the Father is eternally Father, he
has never been a self, that is, never without the Son. For Zizioulas ‘self’ means
an individual, in the sense of a particular being not relationally constituted.
In this sense, ‘in personhood there is no “self”, for in it every “self” exists
only in being affirmed as “other” by an “other”, not by contrasting itself with
some “other” ’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 55). Zizioulas notes how postmodern
thought has proclaimed the death of the self (he mentions, for example,
M. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the Human Sciences
[London: Routledge, 1974]), because of modernity’s repression of the ‘other’.
However, Zizioulas notes how the ‘other’ of postmodernity is considered
neither as a priority in existence nor as relational in an ontological sense.
The necessity of the death of the ‘self’ is a relevant theme in Zizioulas, which
he traces back to biblical revelation (Matthew 16:15; Luke 14:26; John 12:25;
Galatians 2:20) (cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 51–52).
36.
Ibid., p. 91. This, as Zizioulas explains, in created reality implies a sacrifice,
because for the biological hypostasis – which, even after baptism, makes its
influence felt on the ecclesial hypostasis – the self is ontologically primary.
The ascetic path, to which suffering is connected, consists precisely in
giving priority to the Other. In the Trinity there is no sacrifice, since there is
eternal transcendence of the boundaries of the self.
37.
‘To initiate’ and ‘to achieve’ are expressions to be understood by Zizioulas
not in a temporal sense. We shall come back to this point.
38.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 61.
39.
We shall see later how this implies that the Father’s freedom is to be
understood as the Son as a free person.
170 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the Father40 is to give priority not to the self but to the other. Moreover,
coming out of the self and constituting the other is for the other. The
exit from the Father’s self, as an affirmation of the other, is in favour of
this: ‘to be is to exist for the other, not for the self, and to love is not to
“feel” something about the other, but to let the other be and be other’.41
Love, as ‘free exit from oneself’, is a ‘relationship’,42 ‘a relationship which
affirms other beings granting them otherness’.43 Freedom is letting the
other be other, by means of an exit from the existence of the self that
gives priority to the self – individual – towards an existence that gives
priority to the other, and thus affirms the self – personal.44 In the light
of this, it is difficult to think of the Father in terms of an absolute person
or dictated otherness; rather, he is to be thought of as erōs, as Zizioulas
explains when he points out that ‘relational ontology is erotic ontology’.45
Zizioulas does not develop much the category of the gift in relation
to the Father – the Father who gives/gives himself – although he talks
about the Father who gives being,46 of love as ‘a gift coming from the

40.
Although Zizioulas excludes the possibility of speaking of self-assertion. He
explains that the ecstatic trait of God (intended, of the Father) guarantees
the overcoming of the ontological necessity of the substance (should the
latter be the primary ontological attribute of God) and of the free self-
assertion (ἐλεύθεραν αὐτοβεβαίωσιν) of the trinitarian existence (cf. «Ἀπὸ
τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου,
p. 95).
41.
‘Relational Ontology’, p. 150.
42.
‘Love is not a feeling, a sentiment springing from nature like a flower from
a tree. Love is a relationship; it is the free coming out of one’s self’ (‘The
Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 166).
43.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 199.
44.
Such a view is not kenotic, since nothing is really overcome, and, just
for the sake of argument, what is overcome is the self, not the person. As
Zizioulas explains, there is no self-negation as emptying, because that
would presuppose individualism: a being that first is apart from relations
and then empties itself to make room for the other (cf. ibid., p. 198).
45.
‘Relational ontology’, p. 150. Zizioulas employs the term erōs as equivalent
to ekstasis, to indicate that movement of exit from the self of a particular
being towards communion with another particular being, a movement in
which the ontological integrity of both is not abolished, but rather affirmed
(cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 72).
46.
‘[T]he gift par excellence that comes from the Other is not a quality, an
“accident” of being, but being itself’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 89).
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 171

“other” ’,47 delivered ‘as a personal gift’,48 of the person as ‘a gift from
someone’.49 The category of gift, on the basis of what we have seen so far,
would help somewhat to better understand the Zizioulan vision.50 In
my opinion, the concept of freedom in Zizioulas could be understood
as follows: the Father gives otherness by existing for the other, that is,
by making his own existence a gift of otherness to the other, by making
his own existence an eternal affirmation of the otherness of the other.
In this way, the donative character of the alterity caused and the alterity
causing would be more evident, and that giving alterity and giving
oneself coincide. Moreover, the juxtaposition of the notion of gift and
that of love should be understood on the basis of the identification,
formally expressed by Zizioulas, of the notion of love with the notion of
freedom. The generation of the Son, like the procession of the Holy Spirit,
is a matter of ekstasis, that is, an ‘event of communion and love’,51 such
that their ‘being is identified with an event of communion’.52 Zizioulas
sometimes talks about communion (koinōnia in the Greek writings,
communion in both English and French writings) in terms of communio,
precisely according to the meaning that has been specified in chapter
one above, under ‘Ousia: General Meanings’, that is, as a common
reality possessed by the Three and flowing from the communicatio by
the Father. For Zizioulas ‘the freedom of God is conceived not so much
in terms of potestas and actus as in terms of communio’,53 where the latter
is to be understood, on the intra-trinitarian level, in reference to the
‘loving relationship that holds the persons of the Trinity’.54 The freedom
of the Father as existence for the other is now understood as the offering

47.
Ibid., p. 55.
48.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 153.
49.
Ibid., p. 141.
50.
Without necessarily admitting some form of kenotism – the Father’s self-
giving as some form of non-being, non-being as a form of being (cf. ‘On
Being Other’, p. 63; Zizioulas mentions S.N. Bulgakov, The Lamb of God
[Paris: YMCA Press, 1933]; J. Moltmann, The Crucified God [London:
SCM, 1974]).
51.
‘[É]vénement d’amour et de communion’ (‘Vérité et communion’, L’être
ecclésial, pp. 79–80).
52.
[T]ὸ εἶναι … ταυτίζει μὲ ἕνα γεγονὸς κοινωνίας («Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ
πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 95).
53.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 116.
54.
Ibid., p. 117. The verb to hold also includes the meaning of to maintain, to
keep, to sustain, to preserve.
172 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

of a relationship of love, such that it keeps the persons in communio,

and always however to refer to the ‘movement of relationality’ that the
Father originates, therefore to his being the initiator of the relationship
and of the relational being. Zizioulas in fact talks about freedom as
communio, both in reference to the relationship of love offered by the
Father, and to the ‘relational existence’55 in which the Father constitutes
the other as an indispensable and irreplaceable particular being, that
is, ontological alterity. Ultimately, freedom is ontological freedom when
it coincides with this relational existence which affirms otherness, as a
particularity loved in a unique way. Freedom is to ‘drive [the particular]
to ontological otherness’56 and this through not a dictated otherness, but
a ‘movement of relationality’.

Freedom as Uncausedness
Zizioulas, commenting on Nazianzen, states that the Trinity is ‘a
movement initiated freely by a person … a movement with personal
initiative’.57 The aspect of the relationship between freedom and the
personal initiative of the Father is very important and delicate, and goes
hand in hand with the question of freedom from the given: ‘the true
person, as absolute ontological freedom, must be “uncreated”, that is,
unbound by any “given”, including its own existence’.58 As will be seen,
according to Zizioulas, the freedom of the Father is characterised by
both aspects – initiative and freedom from the given – and one coincides
with the other only in the case of the Father. From this it follows that
freedom, and therefore personhood, is not the prerogative of the Father
alone, as some of Zizioulas’ critics have claimed.59 Moreover, he talks

55.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, Scottish Journal of Theology 28,
no. 5 (1975), p. 409. In this regard, Zizioulas talks about communio, the
Latin term being replaced by the English communion in Communion and
Otherness, p. 214; cf. Greshake, ‘Trinity as “Communio” ’, p. 333.
56.
‘On Being Other’, p. 39.
57.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 131; cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.2 (PG
36, 76B).
58.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 93.
59.
See, for example, V. Harrison, ‘Zizioulas on Communion and Otherness’,
St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly 42, nos 3–4 (1998), pp. 273–300, at p. 279;
E.T. Groppe, ‘Creation Ex Nihilo and Ex Amore: Ontological Freedom in
the Theologies of John Zizioulas and Catherine Mowry LaCugna’, Modern
Theology 21, no. 3 (2005), pp. 463–96, at p. 468.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 173

about ontological freedom in relation to the absence of the datum,

and of the absence of the datum in relation to the uncreated, and not
uncaused, being of the person. Uncausedness is not a conditio sine
qua non for freedom from and freedom for and, yet, in God freedom,
if it is not exclusive to the Father, and therefore not exclusively linked
to uncausedness, is founded on the freedom of the Father, which is
characterised by uncausedness. The central thesis of Zizioulas that I
shall discuss is as follows: ontological freedom applies to the person qua
talis; it consists in being self, as transcending the boundaries of individual
existence, as being affirmed by another and affirming other, and it differs
in different persons in the different modes of existence by which it is
hypostasised.
Therefore, if Zizioulas states that ‘God is truly free because he is not
confronted with anything that is “given” to him’,60 he makes it clear that
this means that:

God is truly free in a positive sense because, ‘eternally’ (that

is, without being confronted with anything ‘given’ as any
being with a beginning would be), He affirms his existence
through an event of communion: He is the Father because
He eternally has a Son through whom he affirms himself
as Father, etc. Thus, the being of God appears truly free as
regards ‘given’ things, and through an otherness which is not
individualization.61

As we can see, freedom from the given is connected not with

ingenerateness but with eternal fatherhood, which does not exclude the
aspect of ingenerateness. If freedom were identified with ingenerateness,
the Son would not be free or would be endowed with a freedom qualitatively
different from that of the Father, as some of Zizioulas’ critics who attribute
this identification to him have objected.62 Connecting freedom with
paternity (the term ‘Father’ being a relational notion), we see that the
freedom of the Father, that is, of a particularity that is unthinkable without
the Son, is unthinkable without the freedom of the Son. Zizioulas writes:
‘A communion that does not derive from a “hypostasis”, that is, from a
concrete and free person, and that does not lead to “hypostases”, that is,

60.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 109.
61.
Ibid., pp. 109–10.
62.
E.g. Torrance, Persons in Communion, p. 292; A. Papanikolaou, Being
with God, p. 150.
174 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

to concrete and free persons, is not an “image” of God’s being.’63 Freedom

from the given, in the case of the Father, does not consist in not having
the Son from the outset to deal with, it consists rather in the fact that the
Father is realised ‘through an otherness that is not individualization’, that
is to say, through the generation of the Son as a causation of otherness and
not of individuality. The difference between otherness and individuality
will become clearer in the course of this chapter: for now, it is enough
to bear in mind that freedom consists in eternally affirming one’s own
existence in an event of communion, and this concerns God, that is, the
Father, as well as the Son and the Holy Spirit.
With regard to freedom for, it is necessary to clarify the aspect of
the timelessness of causality, introduced by the term ‘eternally’. In ‘The
Father as Cause’ and ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, two writings in which
reflection on the Father’s causality reaches further maturity, Zizioulas
dwells on the fact that the notion of causality in the Fathers is atemporal,
that is, uncreated.64 This implies that divine causality cannot be thought
of in terms of consecutiveness: the person is not before nature and the
Father is not before the Son, i.e. no Father as an individual is postulated.
There is no before and after, and yet there is a taxis in which causality
is implied.65 The cause is constituted in relation to the caused: this is
precisely the characteristic of divine causality, namely the avoidance of
individualism and hence of necessity. Since it is linked to personal being,
and personal being is a category that does not pertain to this state of
creation, such causality is unthinkable in ‘our experience of fragmented
time’.66 Even when Zizioulas states that ontological freedom causes
personal being,67 he is not saying that freedom is prior to the person, but
that freedom is the ontological principle, in the sense of ‘fundamental
reality’, ‘primary ontological reality’, of the person of the Father, the
Son and the Holy Spirit. It also specifies that timelessness (and therefore
non-consecutiveness) in reference to causality, is due to personhood.
It is because of the personhood of causality, that is, because of the
being that establishes otherness in communion, that spatio-temporal
fragmentation, and therefore givenness and choice, is excluded.68

63.
‘Introduction’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 14; cf. Being as Communion, p. 18.
64.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 128; ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, pp. 201–2.
65.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203.
66.
Ibid., p. 202.
67.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 122.
68.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, pp. 201–2.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 175

So, if the absence of the datum is not the prerogative of the Father’s
freedom – since freedom is not identified with non-derivation, but with
being for the other and, as we shall see, with being other – and if God’s
freedom is rooted in the Father’s paternity, Zizioulas clearly affirms
the ‘personal initiative’ aspect of the Father’s freedom. This personal
initiative refers both to the act of generating and bringing forth and
to indivisibility, since it proceeds from a being not initiated by anyone.
It is here that the two different patristic formulations of the hypostatic
property of the Father – paternity and ingenerateness – are closely joined
together, as we have seen with regard to Zizioulas who, within a few
lines, speaks of ‘ingenerate’, ‘Generator’ and ‘ungenerated Generator’.69
In this sense, the notion of ingeneration clarifies that of paternity: the
Father is the one who, not generated, generates. Hence ingenerateness,
as part of the notion of paternity, refers to the freedom of the Father
and consequently this freedom is connected to the hypostatic property
of the Father, and not to a natural property. Freedom as ingenerateness
is therefore not separable from freedom as paternity and indicates the
freedom of personal being as the Father’s own initiative.70

Freedom to Be Oneself as Other

With reference to the understanding of freedom as being for the other,
as a movement of affirmation of the other, Zizioulas also repeatedly
states that ontological freedom is ‘ freedom to be other’ and ‘freedom
to be oneself ’.71 In the transcendence of the self, which is existence for
the other, the Father constitutes himself as other than the Son and the
Holy Spirit and so is himself. In this, according to Zizioulas, consists
the ontological freedom of the Father. It is easy to understand how the
definition of identity – being oneself – is linked to being in relation,
or better still, to being for the other. Therefore, freedom as being other
is to be understood in an ontological sense. In order for a particular
being to be itself, it is not enough that it should have different qualities

69.
Agennētos; ‘generator’; ‘ungenerated Generator’; cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’,
p. 203.
70.
Cf. Nazianzen’s discussion of the Son’s glory as participation in the glory of
the causeless (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.11 [PG 36, 89A]).
71.
‘[L]iberté d’être autre’; ‘liberté d’être soi-même’ (‘Communion et altérité’,
pp. 31–32). Note how the term self, when referred to the expression being
self, has the value of a reflexive pronoun and indicates being what/whom
one is. When it is considered with a noun value, as in the case of referring to
a particular being as a self, it has an entirely different meaning.
176 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

from another particular being, it must be affirmed as other than

another, in such a way that its natural qualities are hypostasised in a
unique way, since only that which is unique, namely, the person, is for
Zizioulas free to be: only the person is ‘the total fulfilment of being, the
catholic expression of its nature’.72 This is what happens in the Trinity
thanks to the existence for the other, primarily proper to the Father and
consequently also to the Son and the Holy Spirit, insofar as they derive
from him.
Ultimately, for Zizioulas, causing otherness means affirming another
in a unique way through existence for the other. If freedom consists in
being affirmed in a unique way, we can understand how, for Zizioulas,
‘ontological causation is … tied up with personal freedom, that is, with
the freedom to be other’.73 The Father is free to be himself in causing
the Son and the Holy Spirit and, in this way, he constitutes himself
(and is constituted) other than the Son and the Holy Spirit, that is, as
a particularity unique to them and, precisely as such, he is free to be
himself. The Father’s freedom to be himself is therefore linked both to
causing otherness (the Father is free to be himself by affirming otherness,
by existing for the other) and to constituting himself as otherness (the
Father is free insofar as he is other, that is, as a particularity unique
to another). These two aspects are intimately linked, since the Father’s
ecstatic movement, his existence for the other, coincides with the
perpetual exodus of himself, from being a ‘self’ to being an ‘other’, and
in this he realises his uniqueness, and therefore his being as freedom:
the Father causes otherness by virtue of his freedom to be self, which is
freedom to be other. From this Zizioulas deduces that ‘we cannot give
a positive qualitative content to a hypostasis or person, for this would
result in the loss of his or her absolute uniqueness and turn a person into
a classifiable entity’.74

Freedom as Hypostatic Fullness

Freedom defined as ecstaticity (in the sense of existence for the other,
affirming the other as other) and as hypostaticity (in the sense of being
self as other) leads Zizioulas to assert that freedom is to be understood

72.
[T]ὸ πλήρωμα ὅλου τοῦ ὄντος, ἡ καθολικὴ ἔκφρασις τῆς φύσεώς του («Ἀπὸ
τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου,
p. 98).
73.
‘Introduction’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 11.
74.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 112. This does not
mean that nature is excluded from the notion of being oneself/other.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 177

as the coincidence of ecstaticity and hypostaticity: ‘the hypo-static and

the ek-static have to coincide’.75 This point is a direct consequence of the
fact that both the notion of ecstaticity and hypostaticity are understood
by Zizioulas in a relational and ontological sense. In this regard, he
talks about hypostatic fullness: ‘This hypostatic fullness as otherness
can emerge only through a relationship so constitutive ontologically
that relating is not consequent upon being but is being itself.’76 Not
all hypostasis, on the creaturely plane, therefore subsists in the state of
hypostatic fullness. If hypostasis is relative to being, being does not in
every hypostasis subsist in its fulfilled state: this is why, as we have seen,
Zizioulas speaks, with reference to the person, of ‘the total fulfilment
of being, the catholic expression of its nature’,77 in which ‘stasis (being
“as it stands”, as it is “in itself”) is realized in personhood both as
ek-stasis (communion, relatedness) and as hypo-stasis (particularity,
uniqueness)’.78 The freedom of the Father consists precisely in this
hypostatic fullness – total fulfilment of being – as an affirmation of
being.79 From this we deduce that this fullness/affirmation of being,
having a personal/relational character, cannot take place unless it exists
in all three persons; but how can this occur?
This fullness of being of the Father, and therefore of the Trinity, does
not result from choice:

Since his existence is not a given thing, God is not obliged to

choose whether to say ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to it. For him, there is only
one way to exercise freedom, and that is affirmatively. … The
Father’s freedom is expressed by saying ‘yes’ to the Son. …
For God, the exercise of freedom does not take the form of
a choice, but it is exercised voluntarily, in the form of love,
expressed in his trinitarian life. … The Father freely consents
to this Son, wills him and acknowledges him as his Son, freely.
God exercises his freedom in love and affirmation when the
Father begets the Son, and when he sends the Holy Spirit.80

75.
Ibid.
76.
Ibid.
77.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 98.
78.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 229.
79.
Cf. ibid., pp. 235–36.
80.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 74–75.
178 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Ontological freedom cannot be understood in terms of decision, and

therefore of choice between affirmation and negation of being. That the
‘freely wills’, preached by Zizioulas in reference to the Father, is not
a matter of choice, does not constitute a limit to divine freedom, but
guarantees its ontological content, and therefore the ‘overcoming’ of
being linked to choice:

If decision becomes an ultimate proof of freedom, non-

existence must be ultimately a possibility for being, since it
represents an ‘alternative’ for decision. This would mean that
freedom can ultimately be the negation of being. But the
possibility of an ultimate negation of being amounts to the
very impossibility of ontology: how can we speak of being, if
non-being can ultimately overcome it?81

The Father’s freely saying ‘yes’ to the Son does not represent a decision,
the result of a choice, and, as we shall see, this is also true of the Son and
the Holy Spirit in relation to the Father. None of the Three chooses, none
of the Three decides, and not choosing, not deciding, for Zizioulas, does
not mean not being able to choose, but not being subject to the necessity of
choosing and, therefore, the Three not being subject to necessity, or more
precisely, their being ‘beyond’ choice.82 In other words, the Three are not
subject to necessity because, in Zizioulas’ perspective, they are, as we
have seen, in the hypostatic fullness, in the affirmation of being, which
is personal being, beyond the boundaries of the self, hypostasised by
each, according to a specific mode of existence. This ‘yes’ of the Father’s
freedom, which is not the result of a choice between ‘yes’ and ‘no’, but
corresponds to the hypostatic fullness, being relational is trinitarian.
It involves the Son and the Holy Spirit, and therefore demands their
hypostatic fullness – which, as we shall see, is also understood as the
hypostasisation of the one and undivided nature. So, for them it is not
the absence of choice, or even hypostatic fullness, that is a constraint,
but individuality.83

81.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
pp. 235–36, n. 41.
82.
The ontological content of freedom lies ‘beyond the concept of choice’ (ibid.,
p. 235).
83.
This point is well identified by L. Eikelboom, ‘Distinguishing Freedoms: A
Response to William Hasker’s critique of the Theology of John Zizioulas’, at:
https://www.academia.edu/6200155/Distinguishing _Freedoms _A _Response
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 179

The ecstatic and hypostatic character affirmed by Zizioulas both

in reference to the person84 and to freedom,85 which sees in God the
coincidence of the two terms, is also presented in its connection with
nature. Freedom is understood both in relation to existing as another in
the unity of nature and in relation to the fact that each person bears the
one and undivided nature in its totality.
With regard to the first meaning, Zizioulas writes that trinitarian
freedom is ‘the capacity to be other while existing in relationship and in
unity of nature’.86 If, in this way, the capacity to be other is understood
as involving both the relational and the substantial aspect, it also
follows that the unity of nature is understood as providing not only
the ‘sameness’ between the Three but also the ‘wholeness’.87 The latter
term is not further specified, but it most likely refers to the ‘hypostatic
fullness’ already mentioned, thus revealing that the latter, like the unity
of nature, is to be understood on the relational level as well as on the
level of nature.88
As for the second meaning, that of freedom in relation to existing by
bearing the totality of nature, Zizioulas writes:

in the case of God there is no antinomy between nature and

person precisely because the divine persons do not derive from
divine nature but from a divine person (the Father), and also
because each person bears divine substance in its totality and

_to_William_Haskers_critique_of_the_Theology_of_John_Zizioulas (accessed
7 January 2019).
84.
Cf. ‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 212.
85.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, pp. 197–98.
86.
Ibid., p. 206.
87.
Loudovikos, in commenting on this passage from Zizioulas, does not consider
the claim that nature expresses wholeness, and criticises Zizioulas by stating
precisely that homoousia expresses ‘plerosis, i.e. the mutual dialogical
affirmation/fulfi lment of otherness on the level of nature’ (Loudovikos,
‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 270). If by ‘otherness on the level of nature’
one means two different natures, one can lapse into subordinationism; if
one means that the affirmation of otherness is connected with the unity of
nature indicating hypostatic fullness, this is what Zizioulas also affirms.
88.
Cf. the expression ‘hypostatic fulness’ (‘On Being a Person’, in Communion
and Otherness, p. 112).
180 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

not partially. Therefore personhood in God cannot indicate

freedom from nature, as modern existentialist thought would
suggest.89

As we can see, the reason for the non-existence of the antinomy

between nature and person is described in relation both to the personal
derivation of the Son and the Holy Spirit from the Father, and to the fact
that each person bears, hypostasises, nature in its totality. This excludes,
for Zizioulas, that one can properly speak of freedom in God from nature
if one does not consider nature to be a reality prior to persons.90 Coming
to the specifics of the Father, in the Trinity there is no opposition between
person and nature, because the Father hypostasises nature – insofar
as he himself constitutes a mode of existence of nature – as freedom/
love that affirms otherness, as generation and procession. Therefore, in
the Trinity, by virtue of the Father’s freedom as a being for the other,
hypostasised as an existence that generates and causes procession, there
is not a freedom from nature, but a freedom for a mode of hypostasising
nature according to the freedom/love that involves all Three. In fact,
as we shall see, by virtue of the Father existing as Trinity, all Three are
constituted in this freedom/love.

89.
‘Trinitarian Freedom, p. 197. As far as the concept of the totality of nature
is concerned, it indicates the one and undivided nature hypostasised by the
person. With regard to the affirmation of freedom as freedom for, and not
as freedom from, it is also presented by Zizioulas on the Christological level
(cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 105).
90.
For Zizioulas, the one divine substance, insofar as it is characterised by
three modes of existence, indicates the being (to einai) of God (cf. «Ἀπὸ
τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου,
p. 91). In some writings he speaks, on the anthropological level, both of
freedom from the necessity of nature and of freedom from nature (cf. ‘The
Father as Cause’, p. 142) and, in the trinitarian field, of freedom from the
equality of nature (cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206). In the latter case
he denies that one can speak of freedom from nature, as existentialist
thought would lead one to do (cf. ibid., p. 197). Zizioulas makes it clear
that statements about divine nature as a necessity from which persons
must free themselves are understood by him only hypothetically with
reference to nature considered apart from or prior to persons (‘Person and
Nature’, p. 107).
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 181

Freedom as Personhood/Ontological Principle of Personhood

It has been said that love as existence for the other, aimed at affirming
the other as a unique particularity, is identified by Zizioulas with onto-
logical freedom. Up to this point we have been considering freedom
with reference to the Father: the Father is free insofar as he exists for
the other; his existence is an affirmation of the other, and so he is not a
‘self’ but an ‘other’. Thus, Zizioulas states that the Father ‘exercises’ his
freedom, and therefore his love. From this we understand that the Father
possesses ontological freedom. Zizioulas, however, goes further and states
that ‘this love that hypostasizes God is not something “common” to the
three Persons, that is to say, something like the common divine nature,
but is identified with the Father’.91 Zizioulas reiterates this concept when
he states that ‘freedom is combined with love (relationship) and the two
together are identified with the Father – a relational notion in its very
nature’.92 It will be seen more clearly that this does not mean that the Son
or the Holy Spirit or man are not persons, and therefore not ontological
freedom, since Zizioulas talks about the person as ontological freedom to
be oneself, as being for the other and being other, free from every datum,93
not in exclusive reference to the hypostatic property of the Father, that is, to
paternity/ingenerateness. It has already been mentioned that for Zizioulas
the freedom of the Father, if it does not imply the freedom of the other,
is not an image of God’s being. In this sense, the Father is ontological
freedom, in the sense of cause – aitia94 – of the hypostatic fullness, as
‘initiator of the divine freedom’:95 he is free, for the other and insofar
as other, according to his specific mode of existence, which consists in
his being cause.96 With this in mind, recognising the ontological content
of freedom implies that it is not a capacity or a faculty of the person,
but coincides with the person himself. We have seen, with regard to the
Church Fathers, how they excluded the interval between the Father and
the Son presupposed in the admission of generation due to the Father’s
91.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, pp. 97–98. Zizioulas states that the Johannine statement ‘God is
love’ refers to the Father.
92.
‘Pneumatology and the Nature of the Person’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 187.
93.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 93.
94.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 187.
95.
Ibid., p. 121.
96.
See, for example, ibid., p. 130.
182 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

will, precisely by concentrating not on the will but on the willing. Here
we encounter a similar situation. For Zizioulas, the affirmation that
the Father is the freedom that hypostasises God aims to dispel both
individualism – understood as ‘self-affirmation of divine existence’,97 in
which the Father, as a particular being who first is and then generates,
is realised as Trinity, thus imposing himself on the Son and the Holy
Spirit98 – and the ontological necessity of substance – when understood
as ‘the primary ontological attribute of God’.99 On the contrary, the
affirmation of the Father as freedom/love that hypostasises God, that
is, the personal being of the Three, means that he is, by his mode of
existence, ontological principle, fundamental reality, not necessitated,
of the free being of God, and therefore of each of the Three: ‘the freedom
of God is the freedom of the Father’.100 As already pointed out, if we really
want to talk about the self-affirmation of the Father in the causative
process,101 we must mean the self-affirmation of the person and not of
the individual, that is, affirmation of oneself as affirmation of the other.

97.
[T]ὴν ἐλευθέραν αὐτοβεβαίωσιν τῆς θείας ὑπάρξεως («Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον
εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 95).
98.
This point is not appreciated by Koutloumousianos, who writes that for
Zizioulas ‘communion and essence come from His [the Father’s] free choice’
(Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three, p. 48). For Zizioulas, the
Father does not cause the essence, nor is ontological freedom free choice, a
concept that refers to arbitrariness and therefore to individualism.
99.
[T]ὸ πρωταρχικὸν ὀντολογικὸν κατηγόρημα («Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ
πρόσωπον», in Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 95). As we have seen,
this is excluded by the Church Fathers (cf. Basil of Caesarea, Homily
24.4 [PG 31, 605B]).
100.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 61. That the primary meaning of
ontological freedom in Zizioulas is that of freedom for the other is not
understood by Knežević, who writes that Zizioulas fails to present freedom
except in reference to transcendence and the abolition of substance (cf.
Knežević, ‘Homo Theurgos’, p. 25). We have seen how transcendence refers
more precisely to the limitations of a substance considered in its impersonal
state; and also how the abolition of substance is a concept that is completely
absent in Zizioulas and to which he opposes another concept that is in fact
contrary, that of the person as the hypostasisation of nature in its totality.
101.
In general terms, Zizioulas talks about freedom as self-affirmation but, as
already indicated, not properly in the case of God (cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον
εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos [ed.], Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 95). This
being so, it may be possible to speak of self-affirmation if one understands
affirmation as affirming otherness.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 183

The Father – but this also applies to the Son and the Holy Spirit – affirms
himself, affirming not the self but the other, that is to say, giving priority
to the other.102
Now the idea of freedom as a person – or of the person as freedom – is
also founded by Zizioulas on the understanding of the person as a mode
of existence of nature. From this he deduces that nature is endowed with
freedom, and therefore it is common to the Three precisely insofar as it
exists according to a mode of being for the other, and therefore as person.103
In this context, the principal mode of the Father constitutes the ontological
foundation of the filial mode of the Son and the proceeding mode of the
Holy Spirit. If we then consider that for Zizioulas the filial mode of existence
of the Son coincides with the Son, and the proceeding mode of existence of
the Holy Spirit coincides with the Holy Spirit, we may infer that (paternal)
freedom, which is the Father, constitutes the ontological foundation of
(filial) freedom, which is the Son, and of (proceeding) freedom, which is
the Holy Spirit.

Freedom from
A consideration of the ontological necessity of substance and
individualism leads us to an analysis of the Zizioulan conception
of freedom in reference to the Father, the meaning of freedom as
freedom from.
Zizioulas writes that ‘trinitarian freedom is, negatively speaking,
freedom from the given and, positively, the capacity to be other while
existing in relationship and in unity of nature’.104 Freedom from, for
Zizioulas, is freedom from the given, referring both to ‘ “totalizing”
substantialism’,105 understood as ‘freedom from sameness’,106 and to
‘ “liberating” fragmentation’,107 understood as freedom from ‘selfhood’.108

102.
In this sense, the terms self-affirmation and causation are not opposed to
each other. The former, however, which is so misleading because it refers to
individualism, should be abandoned.
103.
Cf. ‘Personhood and Being’, in Being as Communion, p. 44; ‘Person and
Nature’, p. 107.
104.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206.
105.
‘On Being Other’, p. 55.
106.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206.
107.
‘On Being Other’, p. 55. These two expressions are used by Zizioulas in
reference to the two extremes of the oscillation of Western philosophy due
to the loss of the Maximian distinction between logos and tropos.
108.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206. Both aspects contrast with personal
being. For Zizioulas, aseity represents, in the modern way, being that is
184 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

A consideration of these two aspects is important. With regard to the

first, the question is whether Zizioulas distances himself from ‘ “totalizing”
substantialism’ or, as has frequently been argued, from substance as
such. With regard to the second aspect, we need to understand if and
how Zizioulas, with his trinitarian reflection centred on the ontological
monarchy of the Father, intends to exclude precisely that theological
reading of the Father as dictated otherness, which, as we have already
seen, has been attributed to him.

Freedom from ‘“Totalizing” Substantialism’:

Eternal Transcendence of Necessity
Zizioulas connects the two meanings of freedom for and freedom from
when he writes:

By being love in himself eternally as Trinity, God realizes

his freedom as a perpetual exodus from the self, not in order
to meet an already existing ‘other’ (individualism) but to
affirm the ‘other’ as a unique Being. Freedom, therefore, in its
Trinitarian sense is not a freedom from but a freedom for the
other to the point of raising the other to the status of absolute
uniqueness irreducible to the sameness of nature.109

The freedom from of which Zizioulas speaks, in reference to the

Trinity, may be understood as freedom from the other, or as freedom
from the identity/equality (‘sameness’) of nature, although only the
second meaning is admitted. As we have seen, Zizioulas has also added
to the expression of freedom from the sameness of nature that of
‘freedom from nature’.110 To some scholars this has seemed a negative

not constituted relationally. As Viola Coloman shows, the term aseitas

(from ens a se) is used in Latin patristics with another sense, namely to
distinguish God, who is an ens a se, from creation, which is an ens ab alio
(V. Coloman, ‘Aseità’, trans. by G. Minardi, in Lacoste [ed.], Dizionario
critico di teologia, Coda [Ital. ed.], pp. 160–62, at p. 160).
109.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 197. In a footnote Zizioulas specifies that the
expression is Lossky’s, but the quotation is not literal. Cf. V. Lossky, À
l’image et à la ressemblance de Dieu (Paris: Aubier, 1967), p. 118. Lossky
deduces this idea from the Confessor, because he believes that it is with the
latter that new ontological categories appear, which are irreducible to those
of essence and refer to the sphere of existence and the person.
110.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 108.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 185

view of nature, even in the case of divine nature.111 Zizioulas makes it

clear that freedom from nature in his writings means ‘not to subject
the particular to the universal’.112 Leaving aside the fact that resorting
to such clarifications may reveal a previous lack of clarity in the use
of terms – and the expression ‘freedom from nature’ is indeed rather
ambiguous – the following should be noted. Freedom from nature
refers, in the anthropological sphere, to fallen nature, whereas, in the
trinitarian sphere, it refers to nature considered as prior to persons, and
thus only hypothetically. Freedom from the equality of nature, on the
other hand, is not affirmed hypothetically. First of all, it is to be framed in
the Zizioulan vision of the relationship of ‘perfect harmony’113 between
the person and nature, in which the person must not be detached from
nature. In this sense, it should be remembered that Zizioulas defines
freedom in positive terms in relation to existing in the unity of nature,
as may be seen from the passage under consideration, in which freedom
from equality is affirmed.114 The expression ‘freedom from nature’,
better specified by Zizioulas himself as ‘freedom from the equality’ of
nature, can have a twofold meaning. If one considers nature as a reality
in itself, independent of the person, it means that the person does not
spring from nature. If one considers nature in its co-fundamentality
with the person and in its co-emergence with personal existence,115 as

111.
Cf. for example, Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 268.
112.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 108. It is in this sense, and only in this sense, as Zizioulas
makes clear, that the expression ‘freedom from nature’ should be understood.
It seems that the expression (referring to the anthropological or, hypothetically,
to the divine level) ‘freedom from nature’ is an (unfortunate) abbreviation of
‘freedom from the necessity of nature’ (cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 142).
113.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 105.
114.
Trinitarian freedom is ‘the capacity to be other while existing in relationship
and in unity of nature’ (‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206).
115.
The statement ‘the person precedes substance and “causes” it to be’
(‘The Teaching of the 2nd Ecumenical Council on the Holy Spirit in the
Historical and Ecumenical Perspective’, in S. J. Martins (ed.), Credo
in Spiritum Sanctum: Atti del Congresso Teologico Internazionale di
Pneumatologia [Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983], vol.
1, pp. 29–54, here at pp. 37–38) has been profoundly revised, to the point
of being able to say that it has been expunged, in the edition of the same
paper in Communion and Otherness (‘Pneumatology and the Importance
of the Person’), p. 192. We read, in fact: ‘person “causes” God to be’. This is
a sign either of a conceptual retraction on Zizioulas’ part or of a correction
186 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

conceived by Zizioulas, it signifies the other being in the equality of

nature, in that it is irreducible to it. Only in the first case is a dialectical
relationship between person and nature and a negative conception of
the latter affirmed; in the second case it is indicated that the person is
otherness/capacity for otherness in the equality of nature, an otherness
that ensures that this equality is not totalising. Thanks to the person,
equality is not all-embracing; even more, for the person, and in the
person, equality becomes symbolic of the unity/unanimity of God.116
Thus, we encounter a second use of the expression ‘freedom from nature’,
this time with a negative meaning and rejected by Zizioulas, in that it is
attributed to existentialist thought. It does not refer to the person, since
the person is the capacity to make the equality of nature exist in a unique
way,117 but to the freeing of the person from nature. Although Zizioulas
has sometimes expressed himself ambiguously in relation to nature,
it is clear that his target is not nature. He wants to exclude ‘“totalizing”
substantialism’, i.e. the attribution to substance of the role of cause/
principle of trinitarian existence, since this would postulate a substance
that is understood independently of the person and thus characterised by

of an inaccurate statement, a sign, in turn, of a personalism (as I argue here)

that is gradually being refined. In either case, Zizioulas does not claim that
the person precedes nature. In fact, he later asserts, without reviewing the
priority of the person over nature, that ‘the “essential” and the “existential”,
nature and person, are not causing each other but are identical with each
other’ (‘The Pneumatological Dimension of the Church’, in The One and
the Many, pp. 75–90, here at pp. 79–80 [first trans. from German by W.J.
O’Hara, Communio: International Catholic Review 1, no. 2 (1974), pp. 142–
58]). When Zizioulas talks about the person as the cause of the existence
of the substance, he uses the term ‘cause’ in inverted commas (cf. ‘Person
and Nature’, p. 90) in order to specify that the person does not precede
the substance and yet constitutes the ontological principle of its mode of
existence, and therefore, more generally, of its existence.
116.
Zizioulas notes that ‘in the case of God there is no antinomy between nature
and person precisely because the divine persons do not derive from divine
nature but from a divine person (the Father), and also because each person
bears the divine substance in its totality and not partially. Thus personhood
in God cannot indicate freedom from nature, as modern existentialist
thought would suggest’ (‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 197). Freedom as
freedom for, and not as freedom from, is also affirmed by Zizioulas on the
Christological level (‘Person and Nature’, p. 105).
117.
So much so that ontological freedom coincides with the possession of
nature in its entirety.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 187

necessity. On the contrary, he wants to affirm that the particular is free, not
because it is liberated from nature, but because it is unthinkable without
nature; it is not ontologically and logically secondary to nature itself.118 In
this sense, and on the basis of what has been said, it may be concluded that
for Zizioulas the personhood of the Father, guaranteeing as it does, with
its agapic ecstaticity, freedom from ‘“totalizing” substantialism’, represents
and realises the eternal transcendence of the necessity of a non-personalised
nature, and therefore stands as a primary ontological reality in God. In
virtue of the Father the being of God is ‘above the limitations inherent …
in givenness’.119

Freedom from ‘“Liberating” Fragmentation’:

Eternal Transcendence of Contingency
On freedom from equality Zizioulas writes as follows:

In as much, therefore, as unity of nature provides sameness

and wholeness, trinitarian freedom, as the capacity to be other,
can be spoken of as freedom from sameness. And in as much
as otherness provides particularity, trinitarian freedom can
be spoken of as freedom from selfhood and individuality.120

If we bear in mind that freedom from is explained by Zizioulas on

the basis of what can constitute a datum for God, then we see here that
not only the ‘ “totalizing” substantialism’, to which he alludes when he
talks about nature as the cause of the Trinity, but also the ‘ “liberating”
fragmentation’ to which he alludes when he talks about aseity and
individuality, that can represent a datum for the Three and thus a threat
to their freedom. The two terms ‘aseity’ and ‘individuality’ are used as
synonyms and designate what he means by individualism, that is, the
conception of the non-relationally constituted person, a particularity
that first is and then relates, whose being therefore does not coincide
with being in relation.121 The idea of the Father as ‘dictated otherness’ is
precisely what Zizioulas wants to exclude with his relational ontology.
Individualism is the denial of ontological freedom, insofar as it is
the denial of being other, both in the sense of existence affirmed by the

118.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 164.
119.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 109; my italics.
120.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206.
121.
‘Ontological individualism is precisely the establishment of an entity prior
to its relationships. Its opposite is the establishment of the entity through the
very relations that constitute its existence’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 122).
188 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

other and in the sense of existence affirmed by the other.122 The Father
in this sense is free, in that he is free from the self:
Ontological identity, therefore, is to be found ultimately …
only in a being which is free from the boundaries of the ‘self’.
Because these boundaries render it subject to individualization,
comprehension, combination, definition, description and
use, such a being free from these boundaries is free, not in
a moral but in an ontological sense, that is, in the way it is
constituted and realized as a being.123
Tom McCall has argued that in Zizioulas’ theology the Father is
understood as an aseity and that therefore the trinitarian existence,
essence and communion are made contingent.124 This would result
from Zizioulas’ postulation of different essential properties in the
Father to those in the Son and the Holy Spirit,125 and his outlining of
an understanding of the ontological status of the Father that constitutes
a necessity not only for the Son and the Holy Spirit, but also for the
Father.126 What Zizioulas ultimately sees is the attribution to the Father
of essential properties different from those of the other two divine
persons. Although this thesis might seem unsustainable, here are some
considerations in support of it.

122.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, pp. 91–102.
123.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 214. It will be seen that this freedom from the self as a relational being
also applies to the Son and the Holy Spirit.
124.
Cf. T. McCall, ‘Holy Love and the Divine Aseity in the Theology of
John Zizioulas’, Scottish Journal of Theology 61, no. 2 (2008), pp. 191–205,
at pp. 195, 199. In the same vein is W. Hasker, Metaphysics and the Tri-
Personal God (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 102–8. A similar
criticism to that of McCall and Hasker has been expressed by Nikolaos
(Nikos) Matsoukas. According to these, Zizioulas, like Arius, does not
distinguish between freedom according to the will (oikonomia) and
freedom according to nature (theologia) (cf. N. Matsoukas, Δογματικὴ καὶ
συμβολικὴ θεολογία Β: Ἔκθεση τῆς ὀρθόδοξης πίστης σὲ ἀντιπαράθεση μὲ τὴ
δυτικὴ χριστιανοσύνη [Thessaloniki, 1988], p. 96); Spiteris has replied to this
criticism, arguing that it is not possible to support such a thesis in Zizioulas
(Y. Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca [Bologna: EDB, 1992], p. 384).
125.
Cf. McCall, ‘Holy Love and the Divine Aseity in the Theology of John
Zizioulas’, pp. 195, 199.
126.
Cf. ibid., p. 201.
The Freedom of the Causativity of the Father’s Being 189

Contingency, in itself, can be related to ontological freedom. Indeed, the

divine will in creation is as much related to God’s ontological freedom as it
is to contingency. However, at the intra-trinitarian level, this is excluded.
Zizioulas reiterates the fact that, from Athanasius onwards, the eternal
generation of the Son has been distinguished from creation, pointing to
the fact that the former is connected with the divine nature, the latter with
the will and that, on the basis of this distinction, the former is preserved
from contingency, unlike the latter which is subject to the possibility of
non-existence.127 The freedom of the Father, of which Zizioulas speaks in
the intra-trinitarian sphere, because it excludes necessity, does not imply
contingency. For Zizioulas, contingency ‘is not the logical alternative
to necessity. The fact that God’s being is not contingent does not
automatically mean that it is not attributable to freedom’.128 Ontological
freedom in God implies neither contingency nor necessity. According
to Zizioulas, trinitarian freedom has no relation to contingency because
the Father, as the principle of the Trinity, has never chosen/had to choose,
has never had to deal with any datum: the Father has always existed in
principle freely for the other – the Son and the Holy Spirit – and without
this existence God simply does not exist. In this sense, the Father, because
of his principial being, has never ‘decided’ to generate the Son, nor has
he ever ‘decided’ that ontological freedom consists in being personal. The
Father causes God to be hypostasised by means of an event that is not of
‘“liberating” fragmentation’, and therefore characterised by individualism
and thus contingent.129 Zizioulas explains:
The existence of the world is not a necessary precondition for
[God’s] existence, whereas the existence of the Son constitutes
the way in which God exists. This subtle distinction (the Son
as God’s mode of existence, the world not as his mode of
existence) constitutes the difference between the will (even
when it is immutable and irrevocable) and nature.130
Ontological freedom is identified with love, which does not depend
on choice; indeed, the personal reality, of which the Father represents
the fundamental reality, is precisely that which, by indicating the eternal
overcoming of the self, constitutes the eternal overcoming of choice, as well

127.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, pp. 79–80.
128.
‘On Being Other’, p. 36.
129.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, pp. 201–2. This is contrary to the views of Hasker
and McCall, for a critique of which see Eikelboom, ‘Distinguishing
Freedoms’, p. 4.
130.
«Χριστολογὶα καὶ Ὕπαρξη», pp. 79–80.
190 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

as of necessity. Zizioulas thus indicates an alternative between necessity

and choice: the personal being that is ‘beyond the concept of choice’ and
‘beyond the concept of necessity’.131 The conclusion is that Zizioulas actually
identifies a ‘third option’ between necessity and contingency, which is
precisely the personhood of the Father, as the eternal transcendence of the
necessity and contingency of the divine being. It is undoubtedly difficult to
think of this as beyond; moreover, approaching the trinitarian mystery on
the basis of the notion of person, understood in terms of individual and
not of personhood, constitutes a problem that is not only theological but
also epistemological. It should be carefully borne in mind, as noted above,
that Zizioulas refers to the apophatic perspective of Pseudo-Dionysius
the Areopagite, according to which truth is hyper, beyond nous, and of
Maximus the Confessor, according to which Christ is hyper alētheian,132
supported with references to agapic-erotic-eucharistic-ecclesial mystical
knowledge.133 On the contrary, the human mind cannot think of freedom
and individuality as disjointed:
we tend to associate freedom with individuality: how can
one be constituted freely if someone else with his freedom
constitutes him? Has the Father ‘asked’ the Son and the Spirit
for their free consent before he brought them into being? Such
a question presupposes individualism, for how can you ‘ask’
someone’s consent for his being if he does not already exist?134
If, on the other hand, one assumes not individualism, but personal
being – the person as a particular being constituted within relationships,

131.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 235; my italics; ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 109.
132.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, pp. 78–9; with reference to
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite, De Mystica Theologia, I.3 (PG 3, 1001A);
Maximus the Confessor, Ambiguorum Liber, 37 (PG 91, 1296C). This
approach identifies and deals with aporias of theological thought. Although
Zizioulas does not state it very much, we can observe that his reflection
affirms and takes seriously into account the aporetic characterof thought,
and so teh actuality of the tension between the already and the not yet of
the personalistion of man’s being and thinking. He retains the fundamental
notions of dogma and deepens its aporetic character for the human mind.
In this, Zizioulas departs from Lossky’s aophatic approach, according to
which the Trinity surpasses any notion of nature and person (cf. «Τὸ εἶναι
τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», 24).
133.
Cf. ‘The Church as the “Mystical” Body of Christ’, pp. 286–307.
134.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 122.
The Father as Trinity 191

and the relational character of substance135 – one has the following:

The Father as a relational entity is inconceivable without the Son
and the Spirit. His freedom in bringing them forth into being
does not impose itself upon them, since they are not already
there, and their own freedom does not require that their consent
be asked, since they are not established as entities before their
relationship with the Father. This is the difference between moral
and ontological freedom: the one presupposes individuality, the
other causes individuality, or rather personhood.136
Reference has been made to the fact that it is not possible to think of
a cause that is not established prior to the relationship with the caused
from ‘our experience of fragmented time’,137 since causality, and therefore
freedom, in God is timeless. In ‘The Father as Cause’ and later in ‘Trinitarian
Freedom’, Zizioulas feels the need to point out that the ontology of divine
being, and therefore causality, is not connected to temporality, and therefore
consequentiality, precisely because of personal reality. It is the latter that
simultaneously affirms otherness and communion, person and nature, taxis
and the eternal co-presence of the Three. In this sense, for Zizioulas, the
Father is not an aseity that asks for consent from the Son – also understood
as an aseity – in order to be generated; on the contrary, in order to render the
idea of the co-presence of the Three and the personhood of the Son, he uses
the image already mentioned of the Father who causes the Son, consenting
to the latter.138 Hence the conclusion: in virtue of the Father, God’s being is
‘above the limitations inherent in choice’.139
It will now be seen whether the freedom of the Father, as personal
freedom, can be defined as the ontological principle of the freedom of
the Trinity’s being and of God’s unity.

The Father as Trinity, as the Ontological

Principle of God’s Triune Being
Zizioulas’ assertion, from which the following considerations arise, is
that the Father ‘is Trinity’,140 in the precise sense that the Father ‘brings

135.
Both aspects are recalled by Zizioulas (cf. ibid.).
136.
Ibid.
137.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 202.
138.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 74.
139.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 109; my italics.
140.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 95.
192 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

about his own being (the Trinity)’,141 identifying ‘his being with an event
of communion’142 as the ‘fruit of freedom’.143 In what follows we shall
examine how, according to Zizioulas, the freedom of the Father/Father as
freedom causes the Son and the Holy Spirit, how the Father constitutes
his person in causing the trinitarian existence, and how this causativity
consists in elevating the Son and the Holy Spirit to be constitutive of
the being of the Son and the Father. As will be noted, Zizioulas’ interest
focuses on the notion of causality without, however, specifying it as
generation and procession. In this we can see a limitation in Zizioulas’
reflection, an approach mostly detached from the consideration of
triadicity – or even of trinitarianism – as its fundamental note, which
depends on the substantial indeterminacy and apophaticity of the notion
of person. For this reason, one speaks more of ‘other’ than of ‘Son’ and
‘Holy Spirit’, more of ‘causation’ and ‘derivation’ than of ‘generation’
and ‘procession’, without being able to go into the theological difference
between them. However, it seems that this vagueness reveals a precise
choice on the part of Zizioulas. In addition to adopting a rather apophatic
notion of person, he also delimits the field of study: if his interest turns
to causation, it is mostly considered in relation to generation and limited
to it. It is the Father-Son relationship that occupies Zizioulas’ attention,
since it is this that, for the trinitarian taxis, comes first with respect to
the procession of the Holy Spirit.

The Father, Ontological Principle of the Son and the Holy Spirit
The first aspect to be examined concerns the notion of causativity of the
Father. For Zizioulas it is existence for the other, in the sense of affirmation
of the other as other, of love for the other, which implies affirmation of
absolute uniqueness: ‘the Other and not the Self is the cause of being’.144
This being the case, the causativity of the Father is not a question of
dictated otherness, but of an existence for the other, the ‘free and loving
originator’,145 oriented, ‘ for the sake of personhood’,146 not for the sake of

141.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 108.
142.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 95.
143.
Ibid.
144.
‘On Being Other’, p. 89.
145.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 137. Zizioulas had already spoken of the Father as
‘a free and loving person’ (‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion
and Otherness, p. 169).
146.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 130.
The Father as Trinity 193

aseity, at existing solely and totally as an affirmation of the other.147 The

person is this ‘identity created freely by love’,148 made to exist uniquely,
that is, as true being: ‘true being is only that which exists for ever as
“other” ’.149 Ontological freedom is this being other, in that it is loved
in a unique way,150 and is this affirmation of the other, that is, ecstatic
being. This is a clear point for Zizioulas, who writes that ‘as a person
you exist as long as you love and are loved’,151 since freedom is freedom
for the other, i.e. freedom to love, and the person is hypostatic (is itself
and therefore free) in being ecstatic, i.e. in affirming otherness, which
is, again, to love.152
The Father as ecstatic movement causes otherness in the Trinity out of
love for personal reality and precisely out of love for the otherness of the
other. His person, ‘free origin and lover’, thus constitutes the ontological
principle of the other, so that love, identified with the Father, turns out
to be ‘constitutive of personal identities’.153 The other exists as other, and
therefore freely, as freedom, insofar as an other, which affirms him as
other, is ‘constitutive’154 of our own being or, in other albeit less precise

147.
Also, as will shortly be seen, to affirm oneself not from the self, but from the
other and from communion with the other.
148.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 167.
149.
‘On Being Other’, p. 65.
150.
Zizioulas states that the Father loves uniquely only the Son (cf. ibid., p. 73).
151.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 167.
152.
In one passage, in the context of anthropology, he seems to refer the
understanding of personhood/liberty to being loved/affirmed as other by
another. In it Zizioulas states that the way to express love in its ontological
character in the framework of an ontology of otherness is not the expression
‘I love therefore I am’, but the expression ‘I am loved therefore I am’ (cf.
‘On Being Other’, p. 89). Zizioulas probably wants to affirm here that, in
the constitution of the human being as a caused being, the priority goes to
being loved and not to loving, and this is indisputable (cf. 1 John 4:19). It is
also certain that loving allows one to remain in the status of being loved (cf.
John 15:10, 12).
153.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 153.
154.
‘On Being Other’, p. 43. Janna Voskressenskaia, in her rapid reflections,
appropriately talks about ‘otherness as the root of the person’ (J.
Voskressenskaia, ‘L’altro, il Padre: L’alterità come radice della persona
all’interno della teologia trinitaria di J. Zizioulas’, Giornale Critico di Storia
delle Idee 9 [2013], pp. 171–79).
194 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

terms, insofar as ‘the other is ontologically an integral part of our own

identity’.155 It is thus that individualism is excluded and an ontology of
the person is affirmed.
Therefore, an otherness is the constitutive being of a particularity
through relation. For Zizioulas, ‘it is only in the relationship that identity
appears to have ontological significance’.156 Although the concept of
relation, as we have seen, is not formally very developed in Zizioulas, it
is to be considered carefully here, since it plays a significant role. First
of all, the relation implies reciprocity,157 albeit asymmetrical.158 It is in
the relationship, and therefore in a reciprocal relationship – in which
the Father has a primary role, since he is the initiator – that the Father
causes: ‘In God it is possible for the particular to be ontologically ultimate
because relationship is permanent and unbreakable.’159 From this it
follows that: ‘[t]he particular is raised to the level of ontological primacy;
it emerges as being itself without depending for its identity on qualities
borrowed from nature and thus applicable also to other beings, but solely
on a relationship in which it constitutes an indispensable ontological
ingredient.’160
In this sense, whether the person is ‘a gift from someone’161 or
whether it ‘arises from relations of freedom that are love and relations
of love that are freedom’162 – when the cause is a free being as relational
and not aseity – are two expressions that are equivalent in meaning, it
being understood that the ontological principle of the Trinity is not the
relation, but the Father as relational being.163 The person, in this case the

155.
‘[L]’autre fait ontologiquement partie intégrante de notre propre identité’
(‘Communion et altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse, p. 28). The meaning
of the term ‘part’ is rather indeterminate. Zizioulas takes up this idea when
he states that the other is ‘part’ of one’s own being (cf. Lectures in Christian
Dogmatics, p. 74).
156.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 76.
157.
Zizioulas also talks about relationship in terms of communion (cf.
‘Communion et altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse, p. 28).
158.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 153.
159.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 107.
160.
Ibid.
161.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 141.
162.
Cf. «Χριστολογία καὶ Ὕπαρξη: Ἡ διαλεκτικὴ κτιστοῦ-ἀκτίστου καὶ τὸ
δόγμα τῆς Χαλκηδόνος», Synaxē 2 (1982), pp. 9–20, at p. 20.
163.
In this sense, Zizioulas’ view differs from that of Wolfhart Pannenberg
for whom monarchy is the result of relationships (cf. W. Pannenberg,
The Father as Trinity 195

Father, establishes ‘the entity through the very relations that constitute
its existence’.164 The relationality of the Father’s being guarantees that
causativity is not imposed on the other who is caused, but rather that it
is a guarantor of the latter’s freedom, since being in relation (being for
the other and being from the other)165 and freedom are identified.166 A
relational ontology is inaugurated by the Father in which, as Zizioulas
adds, taking up the teaching of the Fathers, the other is the ‘ultimate
destination, … “rest” (στάσις)’.167 As Zizioulas explains, ‘patristic
thought avoids such dangers of totalizing ontology by proposing a
relational otherness which is always generated or caused by the Other
and which aims at and “rests” in the Other’,168 since the purpose of
existence ‘the “other” not as ἄλλο but as ἄλλος, that is, not as nature
but as person or hypostasis’.169 The purpose and ‘rest’ of the Father is the
other, and for this reason he exists for the other. It is for the other that
the Father realises himself as freedom, in the sense of the ontological
principle of the freedom of the other/the other as freedom, as existence

Systematische Theologie: Volume 1 [Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht,

1988]).
164.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 122.
165.
Catherine M. LaCugna has also presented personhood as ‘being-for-
another and from-another’ (LaCugna, God for Us, p. 246).
166.
Commenting on Zizioulas, Mario Bracci writes: ‘the Father is the
beginning, the one who generates freedom from his freedom, not
understood as a limitation of his freedom, but precisely as an ek-static
movement. The freedom of the Father in some way has no reciprocity: he
generates freedom by invoking the other in his difference. His own person
is the basis from which freedom emerges; the initiative is the Father’s. The
strength of freedom lies precisely in this paradoxical beginning: there can
be freedom where someone begins it, where someone frees from mere
referentiality to himself, where the other is not only reciprocal, but, by
affirming himself, reciprocates the very freedom from which he began’ (M.
Bracci, Paterologia: Per una teologia del Padre [Milan: Cinisello Balsamo,
2017], pp. 152–53). The initial freedom, proper only to the Father, generates
freedom insofar as it generates not an alius but an alter (cf. ibid., p. 151) and
is therefore freedom not of an alius but of an alter.
167.
‘On Being Other’, p. 53.
168.
Ibid., p. 54.
169.
Ibid., p. 68; Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep. 101 (PG 37, 180AB); Maximus
the Confessor, Ep. 15 (PG 91, 552B).
196 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

that transcends the boundaries of the self. In this sense, the person is
freedom insofar as his ontological principle is freedom.

The Father, Ontological Principle of Himself

For Zizioulas, the Father exists as Trinity,170 and this out of love for the
personal being, that is, for the otherness of the other, a love that makes
the other unique and unrepeatable, and therefore eternal. In this sense,
the Father is love because he exists as Trinity:171 the Father, in order to
affirm the otherness of the other, out of love for the otherness of the
other, constitutes his existence as Trinity. In other words, he constitutes
himself as other in relation to the other (the Son and the Holy Spirit),
that is, he brings about his hypostasis as Father, as being in relation to the
Son and the Holy Spirit, as being other than the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Therefore, the affirmation of otherness takes place172 by being included
in his own identity, by his letting the otherness of the other condition
it:173 the Father constitutes himself as other, constituting his identity as
an identity that gives priority to the other over the self,174 including the
other as constitutive of his being. In this way, if the priority of the Father
consists in giving priority to the other, communion is integrated into
the notion of person.175 Zizioulas, in this regard, makes use of the notion
of corporate personality, understood as that particular being which
includes in itself a unity of many.176 He recalls how some scholars have
elaborated this notion with reference to Adam and Christ,177 noting,

170.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 108.
171.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 97. Zizioulas bases this statement on the Johannine ‘God is
love’ (1 John 4:16) which he shows to refer to the Father.
172.
Inclusiveness (cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 74) is understood by Zizioulas
in terms of communion in distinction, and therefore in no way implies
confusion or imposition.
173.
Here too the term ‘conditioned’ (cf. ‘The Mystery of the Church in Orthodox
Tradition’, in The One and the Many, p. 142), indicating an affirmation of
otherness, has nothing to do with imposition.
174.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 91.
175.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 127.
176.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 105; also with
reference to Abraham (cf. ‘La communauté eucharistique et la catholicité
de l’église’, in L’être ecclésial, pp. 111–35, at pp. 113–14).
177.
He mentions: H.W. Robinson, ‘The Hebrew Conception of Corporate
Personality’, in J. Hempel, P. Volz and F. Stummer (eds), Werden und
The Father as Trinity 197

however, that its content was also applied by the Cappadocians to divine
ontology178 to show how the Father enacts himself as ‘a unity of many’.179
This is a central aspect of Zizioulas’ understanding: the Father ‘affirms
his own existence through an event of communion’180 which is what the
perpetual exodus from the self and thus his freedom consists in.181
Zizioulas makes it clear that the Father causes relationships and
emerges from them: ‘the cause is not established as a personal entity
prior to that of which it is a cause, but in and through its relationship
with it’.182 It is precisely this simultaneity of causation by the Father,
and of the constitution of his person through the relationship with
the caused, that is the mark of God’s personal being, and hence of
the ontology of the person. In this sense, both the affirmation of the
trinitarian taxis and the simultaneity or circularity of the Three are
fulfi lled:

When we say, therefore, that the Father is ‘first’ (and ‘cause’),

we do not imply by that that he is established as a person as a
‘given’ to the other persons, but that within the nexus of the
divine relations, in which he establishes himself as a person,
he possesses a hypostatic property (Generator) which makes
him ‘first’ (and ‘cause’).183

First, note that Zizioulas uses both the active form (establishes)
and the passive form (is established) in reference to the causation of
the Father. Second, note that Zizioulas clearly states that the Father

Wesen des Alten Testaments: Vorträge gehalten auf der Internationalen

Tagun Alttestamentlicher Forscher zu Göttingen vom 4.-10. September 1935
(Berlin: A. Töpelmann, 1936), pp. 49f.; A.R. Johnson, The One and the
Many in the Israelite Conception of God (Cardiff: University of Wales, 1942);
J. de Fraine, Adam et son lignage: Études sur la «personnalité corporative»
dans la Bible (Brussels: Desclée de Brouwer, 1959) (‘On Being a Person’, in
Communion and Otherness, p. 105).
178.
‘The analogy of Adam which was applied to the human being … was
applied also to this question’ (ibid.).
179.
Ibid.
180.
‘[A]ffirme son existence par un événement de communion’ (‘Vérité et
communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 109).
181.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 197.
182.
Ibid., p. 202.
183.
Ibid., p. 203.
198 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

establishes himself/is established (constitutes/is constituted) as other –

and therefore in relation to the other – but that is not to say that he is
not the ontological cause of himself. The other – the Son or the Holy
Spirit – as will be seen shortly, is constitutive of the being of the Father
and therefore of God and of himself, but not a cause.
At this point it is necessary to clarify the terminological distinction
that may be made in Zizioulas between the following pairs of terms
referring to the trinitarian/personal being, without which one may be
led to misunderstanding of his thought. The distinctions are between
ontologically constitutive (each of the Three, the relation)184 and ontological
cause/ontological principle (the Father),185 and between ontological principle/
ontological cause (the person)186 and primary ontological principle/primary
ontological cause (the Father)187 or, in other words, between ontological
principle of being (the person)188 and primary ontological principle of divine

184.
‘[I]f the One were not one of the Three, this would not allow for the Many
to be constitutive of being’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 35; my italics). The
constitutive is what is required for a thing to exist (cf. ‘The Trinity and
Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159), ‘an indispensable
ontological ingredient’ (‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 107) which, therefore, is elevated ‘to the primary state of being’ (‘On
Being Other’, p. 35). On the constitutiveness of the relation, cf. ‘On Being
a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 112. The relation is also said to
be the person’s ‘ontological ground of being’ (ibid., p. 111). This passage of
Zizioulas, like others already seen, may mislead through lack of precision.
Considering the context of his argument, he is not claiming that relation is
the ultimate ontological category, which he rejects as in the case of Buber’s
between (cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 47). He is talking about the absolute
oneness that arises from a relation with another otherness. The ultimate
ontological category is thus not the relation but a relational otherness.
185.
‘[A]rche of personal divine being’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 119); ‘cause of
being’ (ibid., p. 89); or ‘beginning of being’ (ibid., p. 131).
186.
[Ἡ] ὀντολογικὴ «ἀρχὴ» ἢ «αἰτία» τοῦ εἶναι («Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς
πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 91).
187.
‘[T]he ultimate ontological principle’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 130).
Sometimes one encounters as an equivalent expression, ‘personal ontological
origination’ (ibid., p. 119); ‘ultimate ontological category in God’ (ibid.,
p. 125); ‘ultimate reality’ (ibid., p. 135); ‘the highest point of reference in
divine ontology’ (‘Relational Ontology’, p. 149).
188.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 91.
The Father as Trinity 199

personal being (the Father).189 Note that the introduction of the primary
adjective applied to the Father presumably occurred in the essay ‘The
Father as Cause’, with which Zizioulas wants to clarify his understanding
of the Father’s causality. According to these distinctions, each of the Three,
as a person, is constitutive of the being of others in relation to others, and
of its own being, while only the Father is the cause: each of the Three, as
a person, is an ontological principle of being; only the Father is a primary
ontological principle.
The constitutivity, occurring in the relationship, which is reciprocal,
is proper to all three, while the causativity, which is like a ‘primary
constitutivity’, is referred to the hypostatic property of the Father as
an uncaused cause.190 The Father, because of his hypostatic property,
is the initiator, in the sense of ontological principle, of the mode of
existence which, because of its ontological nature, consists in existing
as otherness.191 This point is understood by Paul M. Collins who writes:

The divine freedom is therefore to be understood as the

freedom of the Father who chooses in love to live as Trinity.
This may be seen as an event of self-realization and affirmation,

189.
‘[U]ltimate ontological principle of divine personhood’ (‘The Father as
Cause’, p. 130); ‘cause of personhood in God’s being’ (ibid., p. 141); ‘the
ultimate giver of personhood’ (ibid., p. 144). The Father is also understood
as the primary ontological principle of human personal being, the first
cause as seen in relation to the Church Fathers, while Adam/Christ is
the ontological principle/cause of human/personal being (cf. ‘On Being a
Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 106).
190.
The expression ‘ungenerated Generator’ (cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203) that
Zizioulas uses to indicate the hypostatic property of the Father is not entirely
correct, since generating, in itself, refers only to the Father-Son relationship.
191.
In ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, Zizioulas expresses this concept in the following
terms: ‘The generating is first, for it cannot be logically placed after the
generated one, albeit not in the sense of a “given” entity, since it is established
in relationship with the generated (and the spirated) one, but only because of
the difference of their hypostatic properties (generator, generated, spirated)’
(‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203). Zizioulas, in explaining the meaning of
the priority of the Father in his reference to the mode of existence, resorts,
only in this case, to the argument of logical precedence. In my opinion,
this explanation, even if formally in line with the Fathers, seems a little too
reductive, as well as not very clarifying, of the reflection on the question of
ontological freedom from which trinitarian existence emerges, atemporally.
200 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

but it is not the realization of a single Absolute Subject, or of

the individual seeking to assert freedom against the necessity
of finite existence.192

The difference between the Father and the Son is therefore not
substantial nor relative, more generally, to being, but to the mode of
being, and this dispels any possibility of subordination. Only on the level
of the mode of being is ‘a kind of subordination’193 affirmed. In order to
better understand this point, it is necessary to take up again the notion
of asymmetrical reciprocity. Zizioulas affirms that the Father emerges
from the relationship with the Son, just as the Son emerges from the
relationship with the Father, but, as an uncaused cause, the Father does
not receive personal being from the Son, unlike the Son, who receives
personal being from the Father.194 This does not mean that the Father –
so to speak – does not ‘depend’ on the Son; on the contrary ‘if the Son
ceased to exist, the Father would not exist either. … Their relationship is
mutually constitutive, each of the parties in this relationship depending
on the other.’195 Moreover, Zizioulas specifies that ‘absolute uniqueness is
indicated only through an affirmation arising freely from a relationship
which constitues by its unbrokeness the ontological ground of being for
each person’.196 Lexi Eikelboom comments that the Father is the principle
of personhood and freedom, precisely because he is a particular being
who depends on the Son and the Holy Spirit. In fact she states that ‘while
the Father is the source of unity and substance of the Trinity and thus
of God, he is only so insofar as he is dependent upon Son and Spirit’.197
This is precisely what Zizioulas states when he writes that there is no
identity of the Father that ‘is not conditioned by the “many” ’.198 In the
Father-Son relationship, reciprocity consists in the fact that both emerge
from the relationship with the other, and asymmetry consists in the fact
that the Father does not receive his personal being from the Son. If we

192.
P.M. Collins, Trinitarian Theology, West and East: Karl Barth, the
Cappadocian Fathers, and John Zizioulas (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2001), p. 180. The term ‘chooses’, however, as we have seen, is problematic in
Zizioulas’ view.
193.
‘[U]ne sorte de subordination’ (‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 77).
194.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 144.
195.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 26.
196.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 111; my italics.
197.
Eikelboom, ‘Distinguishing Freedoms’, p. 3.
198.
‘The Mystery of the Church in Orthodox Tradition’, p. 142.
The Father as Trinity 201

interpret Zizioulas’ thought correctly, in order to answer the question

of how to combine the two aspects, we must return to what is being
examined in this paragraph, namely the causality of the Father with
regard to his own person, and therefore the fact that the Father causes
his own constitution/allowing himself to be constituted in the relationship
with the other. As a corollary of what has been said, we come to the
following important point: the Father, if he has the Son and the Holy
Spirit as constitutive elements of his being, has himself as primary
ontological principle/primary ontological cause, not as aseity but as
otherness, as other than the Son and the Holy Spirit, since the other is
for Zizioulas the ontological principle of being.

The Son and the Holy Spirit as Otherness Elevated to

Ontological Constitutives of the Free Being of the Father
Zizioulas affirms that the Father not only ‘establishes himself’ in
relation to the other – thus affirming the ‘active’ aspect of the Father in
constituting himself – but also that he ‘is established’ in relation to the
other – thus declaring the ‘receptive’ aspect.199 Understandably, Zizioulas
emphasises the ‘active’ aspect of the Father by virtue of his hypostatic
property. Of the Son and the Holy Spirit, he emphasises the ‘receptive’
aspect, by virtue of their hypostatic properties of being generated and
being made to proceed. However, the ‘receptivity’ of the Father’s being
and the ‘affirmativity’ of the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s being, as we shall
see, are made clear by Zizioulas. For Zizioulas, each of the Three loves
the other two and freely responds to the love received: ‘The Father loves
the Son and the Spirit, the Son loves the Father and the Spirit, the Spirit
loves the Father and the Son: it is another person that each loves … each
person loved is free to respond to this love with love.’200 Zizioulas talks
about a perfect balance and full reciprocity, attributing to the mode of
existence the power to determine the peculiarity of the hypostasisation
of this giving and receiving of love. The hypostatic fullness, affirmed

199.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, pp. 202–3. Francesco Botturi writes: ‘The
ontology of freedom is an ontology of generation: freedom is a relation
to generate other freedom and is able to relate insofar as it is capable of
generating (and being generated). In its relational aspect, in fact, freedom
is a place of passive and active transmission, it is always generated and
generative’ (F. Botturi, La generazione del bene: Gratuità ed esperienza
morale [Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 2009], p. 155).
200.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 53–54.
202 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

by Zizioulas in relation to each of the Three in communion with each

other, makes it difficult to understand causativity as an imposition and
receptivity as a subjection.201
If the Father realises himself as Trinity and his personal being is
identified with ontological freedom, it can be understood how the Father
is free if the Trinity, with which he identifies himself, is free, that is, if
God ‘exists as a communion of free love of unique, irreplaceable and
unrepeatable identities’.202 The Father is ‘ultimate ontological category
in God’,203 in the sense that he is the one who makes the Three ‘equally
ultimate’,204 insofar as ‘constitutive of being’,205 since he ‘raises otherness
to the primary state of being’.206 Given the ontological character of the
love that the Father hypostasises, and with which he hypostasises the
being of God, he makes communion,207 the Trinity and the oneness
of God primary.208 Hence ‘Trinity is as primary ontologically as the
unity of God’209 and therefore ‘unity and diversity coincide in God’s
very being’.210 This is equivalent to saying that ‘the “one” and the
“many” coincide fully in God’211 or that ‘nature or substance coincides
fully with personhood in God’s existence’.212 Therefore, all of this is
based on the principle that ‘otherness and communion are mutually
conditioned’,213 not insofar as ‘this unity … produce[s] difference – this

201.
Receptivity, as a characteristic trait of personhood, is not an indication of
ontological degradation. As we shall see in greater detail below, the Father
elevates the Son to ontological otherness, that is, to a primary ontological
category, constitutive of the being of the Father, and that, more extensively,
the Father elevates the person to principle/cause of being qua talis.
202.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 168.
203.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 125.
204.
Ibid., p. 135.
205.
‘On Being Other’, p. 35.
206.
Ibid.
207.
‘[M]aking communion primordial’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 126). The
adjective ‘primordial’ is to be understood as a synonym of ‘primary’.
208.
‘[T]o make the Trinity ontologically ultimate … the oneness of God … as
equally ultimate’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 135).
209.
‘Uniformity, Diversity and the Unity of the Church’, in The One and the
Many, p. 337.
210.
Ibid., p. 336.
211.
Ibid., p. 337.
212.
‘On Being Other’, p. 64.
213.
Ibid.
The Father as Trinity 203

would have been Neoplatonism’,214 but insofar as ‘otherness – and by

extension diversity – is built into the very notion of oneness or unity’.215
If otherness is a primary ontological category, being a relational
notion, then communion is also made primary, and thus the fact that
it ‘generates’, or ‘creates’, otherness.216 The Father, a primary ontological
category, makes the Trinity, and therefore otherness, primary and not
secondary.217 The primacy (or priority) of the otherness of the other is
also and above all valid in the case of the Father.218 It is not moral but
ontological, since the Father is existence for the other, affirmation of
the other insofar as other. In this way, the other, elevated to absolute
ontological otherness, is elevated to the primary state of being, to
constitutive of its cause. Hypostatic fullness is thus realised, in that each
person hypostasises communion with the others, beyond the existence
of the self, as communion in otherness, as one and many, and therefore
as Trinity.219
From the affirmation that the Father exists as Trinity, as One and
Many, which leads the other two persons to exist as One and Many,
the notion of the divine person opens up to a more properly trinitarian
understanding – which, however, is little developed by Zizioulas. Until
now, this notion has been presented, in its connotation, causal or caused,
in essentially binary terms. However, if the cause is only the Father, the
causal relationship is binary in the case of the Son, not the Holy Spirit,
for whom the mediation of the Son intervenes. In chapter four it will be
seen that the causation of the Son and the Holy Spirit opens up to an
understanding involving the ternary (or trinitarian) aspect. Note here,

214.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 90.
215.
‘Uniformity, Diversity and the Unity of the Church’, in The One and the
Many, p. 337.
216.
‘La communion ne menace pas l’altérité, elle la génère’ (‘Communion et
altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse, p. 28); ‘communion creates singularity’
(Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 58).
217.
Therefore, the uncausedness of the Father is not at odds with the
co-emergence of the Three. This point is understood, for example, by
Collins, Trinitarian Theology, West and East, p. 194.
218.
Note Nyssen’s statement that the Son is in the principle which is the Father
(Gregory of Nyssa, Contra Eunomium, 8 [PG 45, 776D-77A]).
219.
‘[T]he Father freely brings them into being simultaneously as “one” and
“many” ’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 57). In this case, the term one, which is
applied to each of the Three, does not indicate the one, which is attributed,
as we shall see, only to the Father.
204 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

at a general level, how this is based on the principle that the caused are
particularities that exist as one and many. For Zizioulas, it is in the causal
relation that the person is originated, that is, the hypostasis and ekstasis
of being which, in the Trinity, is identified with the communion of the
Three, that is, with the ekstasis of each towards the other two persons.
What is ultimately caused is the person, a particular being for whom the
Trinity – the Three in communion and unity of nature – is constitutive
of identity. If Zizioulas affirms that the Father exists as Trinity, what
follows is that the Father is not Father not only if there is no Son, but
also if there is no Holy Spirit, and this applies, mutatis mutandis, also to
the Son and to the Holy Spirit. Zizioulas writes that ‘none of the three
persons can be conceived without reference to the other two’,220 since
each exists as one and many,221 as the ‘mode in which each person of
God receives his existence from the others’.222 In short, giving existence
is connected with the constitutivity of each person in relation to the other
two; in the case of the Father it is a ‘primary constitutivity’, by virtue
of his mode of being. Indeed, when Zizioulas, in ‘The Father as Cause’,
one of his most mature writings on the subject, states that the Father,
as an uncaused cause, does not ‘receive his personhood from those
who receive it from him’,223 he is referring to the Father as the ‘ultimate
giver’.224 This is confirmed when he states that ‘with “person”, we refer
to the way of mode in which each person of God receives his existence
from the others, so that Fatherhood, Sonship and procession indicate
the ways in which these three persons exist’.225 Zizioulas is clear: each of

220.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 161; my
italics.
221.
In the next chapter this point will be discussed in greater depth. Here it is
simply stated that Zizioulas limits himself to affirming the trinitarian nature
of the notion of person without speculating too much on it, in fidelity to the
Fathers of the Church. It will also be seen that in the field of anthropology he
presents a trinitarian framework: the understanding of the person includes
the Father, Christ, the Holy Spirit, the Church and creation.
222.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 64.
223.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 144.
224.
Ibid.; my italics. This expression appears in ‘The Father as Cause’. With
it, Zizioulas makes it clearer that the many are ‘constitutive of being’
(‘On Being Other’, p. 35), and therefore that the Son and the Holy Spirit,
according to their own mode of existence, also constitute trinitarian
existence. This idea is clarified by Zizioulas in time.
225.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 64; my italics.
The Father as Trinity 205

the Three receives existence and receives it from the other two. He goes
on to clarify that ‘the Father does not come into being: he simply exists
as the Father, and he freely brings the Son and the Spirit into existence
and does not exist without them’.226 The Father, by his particular mode
of existence, is not caused by the Son and the Holy Spirit, but causes his
existence in relation to them, who are the constitutive elements of his
being, insofar as they love him, and thus affirm him in his hypostatic
particularity. Therefore, in a constitutive and not causative sense, he
receives his existence from them.
On this basis it is possible to assert that, if the person exists as one
and many, the hypostatic fullness of each of the Three constitutes
the hypostatic fullness, and therefore the freedom of the others. The
freedom of the Son, like that of the Holy Spirit, consists in the love of
the Father, which affirms otherness and indicates hypostatic fullness, that
is, existence for the other. It is a love freely offered and freely received:
‘Love in God’s personal existence is a-symmetrical; it is not self-explicable
but derives from a source which grants it as a personal gift, freely offered
and freely, that is, personally received.’227 The Father’s love is such that it
constitutes the Son and the Holy Spirit as freedom receiving the gift of
being, that is, otherness. Receiving, which is the acceptance of one’s own
otherness caused by the other who is the Father, is also connected to the
affirmation of the other’s otherness. Zizioulas states that the Son and
the Holy Spirit receive love as a personal gift from the source which is the
Father and that the Three affirm the otherness of each other: ‘God’s being
consists in the mystery of the three Persons each of whom is radically
“other” in affirming each other’s otherness through communion.’228

226.
Ibid.; my italics.
227.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 153; my italics. The freedom of the Son and
the freedom of the Holy Spirit are clearly affirmed and understood as
being other. The next chapter will examine how this being other is to be
understood in terms of the Son’s and the Holy Spirit’s acceptance of their
otherness caused by the Father.
228.
‘On Being Other’, p. 55. If receiving is affirming the other, it consists
in hypostatic fullness, in the affirmation of being, not of kenōsis, as
Papanikolaou proposes, referring to Lossky. The latter speaks of ‘kenotic
reception’ (Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 152). No form of kenoticism
is admitted by Zizioulas, on the basis of patristic teaching, at the intra-
trinitarian level (cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 63). Even when he talks about the
perpetual exodus from oneself (cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 197) – an idea
similar to that of Papanikolaou, who talks about ‘being free from oneself
206 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

This passage is significant. Here we have it that each affirms otherness,

and that each affirms reciprocally the otherness of the others. Zizioulas
thus specifies that one is ‘other’ because one is affirmed/loved in a unique
way by another who causes such affirmation/love. However, being
constituted as ‘other’, that is, as a uniquely loved particularity, this other
finds itself in the ontological freedom to exist, according to its own mode
of existence,229 affirming the other, that is, existing as an affirmation of
the other, constituting it as other. In this regard Zizioulas spoke of the
freedom of the Father which ‘is expressed by saying “yes” to the Son’, of
the Father who ‘freely consents to his Son’ and ‘acknowledges him as his
Son’,230 to indicate how the Father constitutes himself/is constituted by the
Son. In this therefore lies the gift of freedom: to be constituted as another
and to constitute the other as another, to be loved and to love, to exist
beyond the boundaries of the self, both in receiving and in giving.231 This
receiving and giving in virtue of the Father is also proper to the Son and
the Holy Spirit. Zizioulas explains this point. In «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς
τὸ πρόσωπον», one of his earliest writings, he states that ‘if God the Father
is immortal, it is because his identity as Father, unique and unrepeatable,
is constantly affirmed to the Son and the Spirit who call him “Father”’.232

in order to receive the other’ (Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 153) –

Zizioulas is speaking hypothetically (cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 107) and
above all as the overcoming of what we may call a kenotic state.
229.
This important aspect will be examined in the next chapter.
230.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 74–75.
231.
The affirmation of otherness is understood by Zizioulas as the exercise of
ontological freedom (cf. ibid., p. 74). It is clear that the use of the terms
‘exercise’, ‘receive’, ‘give’, in the case of the Trinity, must be understood in
an ontological and not a moral sense, that is, of being and not of acting. They
therefore indicate an ontological status in which it is only logically that they
can be thought of separately, otherwise we fall back into individualism.
232.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 101. This is also true of the other two persons: ‘If the Son is
immortal, this is mainly due not to his substance but to the fact that he
is the “monogenés”, the only-begotten (I emphasize here the concept of
uniqueness), and the one “in whom the Father was pleased”. Similarly, the
Spirit is “life-giving” because he is “communion” ’ (ibid.). I shall comment
in the next section on the apparently negative statement about the Son’s
substance. With regard to the statement on the Holy Spirit, we may note
how a certain weakness emerges, at the intra-trinitarian level, of Zizioulas’
The Father as Trinity 207

In ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, one of his later writings, he also confirms this

idea: ‘When the Father says to the Son “You are my Son”, and the Son
replies “You are my Father”, a relationship is established and affirmed
which involves the affirmation of otherness.’233 The ontological weight of
affirming identity for Zizioulas is well known: this expression indicates
affirmation of being, and is attributed not only to the Father, but also
to the Son and the Holy Spirit. Yet, the assumption that the Father, in a
causal sense, does not receive personal being from anyone, as an uncaused
cause, is not betrayed,234 since for him, being affirmed by the Son and
the Holy Spirit means, as Zizioulas explains, safeguarding his personal
identity, on the basis of his trinitarian existence of which he is the sole
cause.235 If the Father ‘requires the “many” from the very start to exist’,236
and if ‘a communion that does not derive from a “hypostasis”, that is,
a concrete and free person, and that does not lead to “hypostases”, that is,
to concrete and free persons, is not an “image” of God’s being’,237 that is, if,
more succinctly, the cause is established in and through relationships,238
then I believe we can conclude by saying that here the idea of the Father
is promoted as the cause of reciprocity, that is, as the ontological principle,
as a personal being, a free and loving origin, of reciprocity.239 In explaining

pneumatological reflection. In explaining why the Three are personal

identities, it is only in the case of the Father and the Son that he puts
forward arguments on the intra-trinitarian level.
233.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 199. The italics are indicative of the ontological
weight that Zizioulas wants to give to the Father’s saying and the Son’s reply
as an affirmation of the otherness of the other and therefore of being.
234.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 144.
235.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 101. Emmanuel Durand states: ‘The Father alone is principle
in the eternal generation of the Son, however; although He does not receive
his being from the Son, the Father is entirely relative to Him’ (E. Durand,
‘Perichoresis: A Key Concept for Balancing Trinitarian Theology’, in Maspero
and Wozniak [eds], Rethinking Trinitarian Theology, pp. 177–92, at p. 182).
236.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159.
237.
‘Introduction’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 14.
238.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 202.
239.
Precisely what Loudovikos claims should be held and what Zizioulas, with
his theology, denies (cf. N. Loudovikos, Οἱ τρόμοι τοῦ προσώπου καὶ τὰ
βάσανα τοῦ ἔρωτα: κριτικοὶ στοχασμοὶ γιὰ μιὰ μετανεωτερικὴ θεολογικὴ
ὀντολογία [Thessaloniki, 2009], pp. 43–45).
208 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

again what is implicit in Zizioulas’ ontological-personal discourse, one

could formulate the question of the Father’s freedom in relation to that
of the Son and the Holy Spirit in the following terms: if the Father is
identified with the ontological freedom that hypostasises God, then the
Father is the freedom of the other.240 Furthermore, if the Father is free, that
is, is other, and causes himself as constituted by another – the Son and the
Holy Spirit – who is freedom insofar as he is uniquely loved, then what is
also true is that the other is the freedom of the Father. Ultimately, the other
(as in the case of each of the Three), insofar as it is other, is freedom, and
is other insofar as its ontological principle is an otherness (the Father as
other). Thus, a particular being, whose ontological principle is freedom/
love, is ontologically freedom/love. Earlier we saw that the freedom of the
Father has a personal character (the Father is freedom); now we see the
meaning of freedom as a person (the person is freedom) and as otherness
(the Father is the freedom of God and, more generally, the freedom of one
is a free other).

The Father as the One, as the Ontological Principle

of the One Being of God
Zizioulas states that ‘it is not enough to make the Trinity ontologically
ultimate, we must regard the oneness of God, that is, that which makes the
three one, as equally ultimate’.241 He considers this to be true insofar as the
Father is not only the ontological principle of the otherness of the Three,
and therefore of God’s being Triune, but also insofar as he is ‘the “cause” of a
personal identity [who] brings forth, “causes”, fully other, that is, ontologically
free and fully equal, identities’.242 In this sense, it can be said, as we have
seen with regard to Nazianzen, that the Father is understood by Zizioulas
as the ontological cause of the Divinity that is contemplated in each of the
Three.243 Affirming then, on the basis of his reading of the Cappadocians,
that the Father is the ontological principle of God’s otherness and unity, he
concludes by identifying the Father with ‘the One’,244 or otherwise called

240.
‘[T]he freedom of God is the freedom of the Father’ (Lectures in Christian
Dogmatics, p. 61).
241.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 135.
242.
Ibid., p. 144.
243.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 2.38 (PG 35, 445C); cf. 20.6 (PG 35, 1072C).
244.
‘[T]he one, the Father’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 131). Sometimes one
encounters the term One – ‘one’ with a capital letter.
The Father as the One 209

‘One God’,245 where the One is understood as ‘the highest point of reference
in divine ontology’,246 ‘the “cause” of trinitarian existence’,247 ‘the ultimate
reality of God’s personal existence’.248

The One as the Personal Foundation of Unity as Communion

Zizioulas’ fundamental thesis is that the One – the Father – exists as
Many, that is, relationally, as a communion of love. Hence, as Zizioulas
explicitly states, the unity/oneness of God is safeguarded by the Father
and is expressed by the indestructible koinōnia.249 The communion
of the Three is founded, therefore, on the Father who constitutes its
ontological principle. Zizioulas, from the patristic point of view, bases
himself on passages such as that of Nazianzen, according to which ‘the
Father is the union’,250 which understands the person as ‘the principle
of unity’,251 that which ‘allows for communion to be unity while being
diversity, and vice versa, i.e., otherness and communion at the same
time’.252

245.
Ibid., p. 137.
246.
‘Relational Ontology’, p. 149.
247.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 150.
248.
Ibid., p. 134. In this regard Zizioulas cites the patristic axiom according to
which the defence of Christian monotheism is based on divine oneness,
founded on the oneness of the principle (one principle  one God). We have
seen how, if the Fathers spoke of the monarchy in relation to the Godhead,
the major data – from scripture, patristic writings, the Creed, the liturgy –
indicate that this one principle is identified with the person of the Father
(cf. ibid., p. 150).
249.
Cf. ‘Communion et altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse, p. 27. The exclusion
of the unity of substance from the role of safeguarding the unity/oneness
of God, which Zizioulas affirms here, means that substance is not the cause
(aitia), or even a cause, of the Trinity, and yet it is possible, as we shall see,
to speak in Zizioulas of this unity/oneness in relation to substance.
250.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 (PG 36, 476B); ‘The Father as
Cause’, p. 137.
251.
‘On Being Other’, pp. 74–75.
252.
Ibid., p. 75; cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 137. It will be seen in the next
section how Zizioulas talks about the Father in terms similar to those
of corporate personality, i.e. as a being that includes the many in unity,
without, however, clearly stating the identification (cf. ‘On Being a Person’,
in Communion and Otherness, p. 105).
210 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

The One, as a particular being characterised by affirming otherness

and communion, ‘does not involve the priority of the “One” or of nature
over the “Many” or the persons. The way in which God exists involves
simultaneously the “One” and the “Many”, and this means that the
person has to be given ontological primacy in philosophy.’253
The ontological primacy of the Father grounds the ontological
constitutiveness of the Many for the divine being and is characterised by
this very aspect. On the causality of the One who is the Father, Zizioulas
writes:

if the One were not one of the Three, this would not allow
for the Many to be constitutive of being. The ontological
monarchy of the Father, that is, of a relational being, and the
attachment of ontological causation to him, serve to safeguard
the coincidence of the One and the Many in divine being, a
coincidence that raises otherness to the primary state of being
without destroying its unity and oneness.254

If the One ‘does not ontologically precede the “Many” but is itself
“One” of the “Many” ’,255 this makes otherness and unity/oneness equally
primary, or rather, ‘a unity which does not end up in totality but allows
for otherness to be equally primary ontologically’,256 since what the One
does is ‘to attach fixity to the “many” as if they were the “one”, that is,
absolute, unique and irreplaceable’.257
Therefore, the personal unity, i.e. ‘in the form of otherness’,258 of which
Zizioulas speaks in reference to the Father, given the relationality of the
Father’s being, also makes it possible to speak of ‘unity understood in the
form of a relational oneness’259 and, more precisely, of ‘unity of personal
derivation’.260 In this sense, otherness is constitutive of the person, both
for the person causing and for the person caused. Otherness is also
constitutive for the person, by virtue of the ecstasy of communion, of

253.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 164.
254.
‘On Being Other’, p. 35.
255.
Ibid.
256.
Ibid., p. 29.
257.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 101.
258.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 146.
259.
‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 7.
Zizioulas connects this relational oneness to the relationality of substance.
260.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 119.
The Father as the One 211

the causing person and, consequently, of the caused person who, by

constitution, has this ecstasy as his ontological principle. For Zizioulas,
communion is an event of freedom, that is, of persons who are other,
unique, in that they reciprocally affirm themselves as such – and therefore
free from the existence of the self – in which the original movement of
affirmation of otherness is caused by the Father and finds its fundamental
reality in the Father.261
This dogmatic aspect of Zizioulas’ theology does not seem to have
been fully understood by the critics. Even Papanikolaou, a theologian
who shows a depth of understanding of Zizioulas’ thought and has
not failed to defend it,262 disagrees on this point: he maintains that the
Three, together, must be the principle.263 We have seen, however, that
for the Fathers the one God is identified with the one principle that is
the Father. In this regard, it should be remembered that for Basil the
Father and the Son are not two gods, because there is identity of essence
between them, and that there is such identity because the Son comes
from the Father.264 On the other hand, if one takes into account the
affirmation of the Father as ‘the ultimate giver’265 of personal existence,
and of the One – still understood as the Father – as the attacher of ‘fixity
to the “many” as if they were the “one” ’,266 since the One includes ‘a
unity of many’,267 Papanikolaou’s thesis may be considered admissible
from Zizioulas’ perspective.

The Question of the One as the Personal Foundation

of Unity as Perichōrēsis
As we have observed, the notion of perichōrēsis does not occupy a
prominent place in Zizioulas’ reflections, yet it is not absent and is
linked to the question of divine unity, although it is treated marginally
compared to that of the causality of the Father.

261.
We have seen how Zizioulas spoke of communion in terms of the capacity
to embrace, to hold together, such that it does not confuse but affirms
otherness (cf. ibid., p. 116).
262.
Cf. A. Papanikolaou, ‘Is John Zizioulas an Existentialist in Disguise?
Response to Lucian Turcescu’, Modern Theology 20, no. 4 (2004), pp. 601–7.
263.
Cf. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 151.
264.
Cf. Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 (PG 31, 605C).
265.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 144; my italics.
266.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 101.
267.
Ibid., p. 105.
212 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

According to Zizioulas, the Cappadocians attempted to express the

unity of the Trinity both by virtue of the affirmation that each person
is the bearer of the full and undivided nature, and by perichōrēsis.268
This notion, understood with reference to the indwelling of the persons
within each other, has the function of highlighting the relationship
between the unity and the distinction between the persons, as well as the
relationship between them.269 Zizioulas claims to have deduced it from
the Cappadocians, with the meaning of the ‘co-inherence’ (sometimes
simply called the ‘inherence’) of the divine persons among themselves.
He writes, in this regard, that ‘the three persons inhere in one another,
so each is found entirely within the other. Each person has its own
ontological integrity, and yet they are one.’270
The expressions ‘the one within the others’, referring to the divine
persons, and ‘the Father is fully present in the Son’271 indicate for
Zizioulas both the ontologically constitutive mode of relationship, such
that no person is conceivable without the other two,272 and the possession
of each person of the whole substance:

The divine substance cannot be broken up; each person

possesses the whole being of God. ‘God is not partitioned’,
as Saint Gregory Nazianzus puts it. The divine being is found
in full in persons who are distinct from one another, so each
person exists within the other persons.273

The persons are in each other without merging;274 this is possible because
‘the existence of the one person within the others actually creates a
particularity, an “individuality” and an otherness’,275 and because this
perichoretic existence makes each one ‘the entire being’276 of God. On

268.
Cf. ibid., pp. 106–7.
269.
‘To refer to this relationship of persons, the Cappadocian Fathers employed
another concept to refer to the unity and distinction of each person. This is
the concept of “perichoresis” ’ (Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 62).
270.
Ibid.
271.
Ibid., p. 63.
272.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 161.
273.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 63.
274.
Cf. ‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, p. 174; Zizioulas refers to John
Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, I.8 (PG 94, 829A).
275.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 64.
276.
Ibid.
The Father as the One 213

this basis, if perichōrēsis is not a key notion in Zizioulas’ reflection, it

nevertheless allows us to understand better the relationality that exists
between the divine persons, which is not exactly between individuals,
but between persons, that is, between particular beings whose identities
include the otherness of others, ‘a unity of many’.277 With this expression
he actually suggests that the discourse on the Father’s personhood
should be compared to that on corporate personality.278
Apart from this, the fact remains that perichōrēsis is fundamentally
foreign to reflection on the causality of the Father, and this appears to
be a gap in Zizioulas’ thought. A greater consideration of this notion
could serve to deepen our reflection. In this regard, Jesmond Micallef
has observed that Karl Rahner, unlike Zizioulas, showed precisely that
‘monarchy explains how the perichoresis is possible; the perichoresis tells
us what the monarchy is for’.279
The notion of perichōrēsis is recalled by him more on the Christological
and anthropological level, and precisely in reference to incorporation.280
The latter reveals that uniqueness is inclusiveness, since it is in the
hypostasis of Christ that every human hypostasis acquires ontological
otherness, insofar as it is hypostasised not by a fragmented nature, but in
ontological freedom. Hence it follows that to love in a unique way means
to include others in the identity of the person loved. This is for Zizioulas
an ontological assumption that, if it is recalled on a Christological and
anthropological level, seems to apply also to the Trinity,281 although,
perhaps because of the limits imposed by a certain apophatic attitude,
Zizioulas did not make this point explicit and develop it on the
trinitarian level, leaving the determination of the trinitarian nature of
divine existence in the background.
Having said this, it must be observed that Zizioulas did not integrate
the perichoretic aspect and that of personal derivation not only out
of respect for an apophatic limit, but also because, in the category of
perichōrēsis – as he stated – he saw the danger of a possible obscuring of

277.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 105.
278.
Cf. ibid. In this sense, the other two divine persons, according to their
hypostatic properties, could also be understood in terms of corporative
personality.
279.
Micallef, Trinitarian Ontology, p. 190.
280.
Cf. for example, ‘On Being Other’, pp. 63–81.
281.
In his ontological reflections, Zizioulas moves from the trinitarian level to
the Christological, anthropological etc. levels with great ease.
214 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the priority of the person in favour of attributing it to the relation.282 In

this regard, it should be noted that Zizioulas, in responding to Alan J.
Torrance, according to whom the doctrine of perichōrēsis amounts to a
rejection of causal relations,283 states that the Cappadocians taught both
co-inherence and causality and concludes that perichōrēsis indicates ‘how
the three persons relate to each other, not how they come into being’.284
This statement raises some questions. Is it possible for Zizioulas to speak
of a ‘how persons relate to each other’ that does not coincide with ‘how
they come into being’? Is it really inherent in the notion of perichōrēsis
that relationality, and not a person, is the fundamental reality of God’s
personal existence? Is it not possible, in the end, to understand the
notions of causality and perichōrēsis in a more unified way?285

The One as the Personal Foundation of

Unity as Consubstantiality
We have already seen that Zizioulas recognises how the Cappadocians
affirmed the unity of the Trinity on the level of substance, on the basis
that ‘each person carries the full, undivided nature’,286 the nature in its
‘totality’.287 In ‘Trinitarian Freedom’ he clarifies his concept of freedom
on both the personal and the substantive levels, stating that it consists
in the ‘capacity to be other while existing in relationship and in unity
of nature’.288 The person is thus understood as the ‘mode of nature’s
existence’289 that ‘provides the mode of exercise of the nature’s will’.290

282.
Zizioulas quotes Colin E. Gunton who rejects the idea of the Father as cause
because all three, existing in relations of mutual and reciprocal constitution,
are the cause of communion (Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian Theology,
p. 196; ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 136).
283.
Cf. Torrance, Persons in Communion, pp. 293f.; ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 136.
284.
Ibid.
285.
According to Durand, perichōrēsis is not an initial datum but has the
function of balancing the notion of monarchy (cf. Durand, ‘Perichoresis’,
p. 180). I believe that it is more accurate to speak of deepening, rather than
balancing, the notion of monarchy and of highlighting more the trinitarian
character of that of person.
286.
‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 106.
287.
Ibid. Here Zizioulas is referring to human nature but the discourse also
includes the case of divine nature.
288.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206.
289.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 102.
290.
Ibid.
The Father as the One 215

Zizioulas, responding to Savas Agouridis, rejects the criticism that the

concept of person is presented in his writings without any reference
to the divine essence,291 since, on the contrary, it provides ‘equality’
and ‘fullness’,292 and this is also recognised by McCall, a great critic of
Zizioulas, who points out that he rejects essentialism, not essence.293

The Co-emergence of Nature with the Trinitarian Existence and the

Non-localisation by the Father of Nature Primarily in Himself
The question of Zizioulas’ understanding of the place of the divine
substance in the trinitarian existence, in relation to the ontological
primacy of the Father, has been the subject of criticism. Some have
argued that the substance plays a subordinate role with respect to the
person,294 while others, more radically, have written that: ‘Zizioulas
conceives of the Trinity starting from the monarchy of the P. [ Father]
and without recourse to the concept of divine ousia.’295 The first aspect
that needs to be examined concerns the relationship between ousia and
personal causation in the Trinity originating from the Father, insofar as
the datum represented by the substance is brought back to the personal
plane, and specifically, of the Father as cause.

Co-emergence of Nature with Trinitarian Existence

We have already seen that Zizioulas affirms the co-foundationality of
person and nature. Moreover, he always points out that the expressions
‘the Son comes from the ousia of the Father’ or ‘the Father gives his ousia
to the Son’ could be harbingers of subordinationist understandings of
the Trinity or could attribute to the ousia the role of ontological cause.296
The first expression, used by Nicaea, had not yet come up against the

291.
‘It is not accurate to say that the concept of person is presented in my theses
“without reference to any essence of God” (Agouridis)’; «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ
καὶ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 17; cf. S. Agouridis, «Μποροῦν τὰ πρόσωπα
τῆς Τριάδας νὰ δώσουν τὴ βάση γιὰ Περσοναλιστικὲς ἀπόψεις περὶ τοῦ
ἀνθρώπου;», Synaxē 33 (1990), pp. 67–78.
292.
‘[S]ameness’; ‘wholeness’ (‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 206).
293.
Cf. McCall, ‘Holy Love and the Divine Aseity in the Theology of John
Zizioulas’, p. 193.
294.
Cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 264.
295.
M.J. Edwards, ‘Padre – Teologia storica e sistematica’, trans. by M.
Zappella, in Lacoste (ed.), Dizionario critico di teologia, Coda (Ital. Ed.),
pp. 961–64, at p. 963.
296.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 129.
216 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Eunomian challenge to ‘identifying nature and person in the Father’297

and placing the Son in a subordinate position in terms of nature with
respect to the Father. The second expression could suggest that the Father
‘gives his ousia to the Son and the Spirit as if he were by himself its original
possessor, or as if the ousia existed somehow prior to the persons and was
imparted to them by the Father, the original possessor’.298 On the basis of
the patristic datum according to which ousia denotes what is common,
Zizioulas considers it inappropriate to speak of the ousia of the Father or
of the Son or of the Holy Spirit. The Nicene formulation ‘from the ousia
of the Father’, according to Zizioulas, was clarified – and therefore in
fact corrected – in the Constantinopolitan formulation by the expression
‘from the Father’, although the former remained customary among the
Fathers, as in the case he mentions of John Damascene.299 However,
according to Zizioulas, the statement that the Son is from the Father’s
ousia is not correlated with the Father’s causality. He writes that ‘John
of Damascus says, with Lossky, that in being cause the Father “imparts
his ousia” ’300 to the Son, just as in Basil’s Letter 38 the expression ‘from
ousia’ is avoided in reference to the cause.301 Therefore: ‘It is one thing to
say that the Son comes from the ousia of the Father, and quite another
to say that in being the cause the Father imparts his ousia’,302 since,
‘although the Son is homoousios with the Father, since he comes from
the same ousia, common to the Father and to himself, the Father causes
in generating him not a transmission of ousia but the emergence of a
person, called the Son’.303 This can be better understood on the basis of

297.
Ibid.
298.
Ibid.
299.
Cf. John Damascene, De Fide Orthodoxa, I.8 (PG 94, 821D); ‘The Father as
Cause’, pp. 129–30.
300.
Ibid., p. 130; cf. V. Lossky, Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (London:
James Clarke & Co., 1957), pp. 59f.
301.
Basil of Caesarea, Ep. 38.4 (PG 32, 329A-33A).
302.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 130.
303.
Ibid. Cf. François-Xavier Durrwell: ‘The only-begotten Son does not come
from a divine nature which the Father would possess. The person of the
Father as such begets. This is how God is, this is how he is the Father; his I
is constituted by producing the Son.’ In a footnote he adds: ‘What in human
eyes seems to be the summit and final term, the person, is in God the
origin: everything begins in the I of the Father. There is not first a divine
essence from which the Persons would spring; at the origin is the Father
from whom springs, with the Son, the Spirit who concretizes all that can
The Father as the One 217

the statement that the hypostasisation of ousia is ‘simultaneous with

the personal differentiation’.304 Not only is the Father not caused by the
divine nature, he neither causes the divine nature nor transmits it to the
other two persons: ‘Divine nature exists only when and as the Trinity
emerges, and it is for this reason that it is not “possessed” by any person
in advance. An a priori possession of divine nature by any person would
imply the existence of this nature prior to personhood.’305
For Zizioulas the affirmation of the simultaneity of nature and Trinity
is important for several reasons: to avoid the attribution to nature of
the ontological principle, in the case where a nature prior to the divine
persons is postulated;306 to avoid the ‘the risk of inequality of deity in
the Trinity’,307 and therefore of subordinationism, in the case where the
nature previously possessed by the Father is postulated; to avoid the
understanding of the Father as an ‘individual’, that is, as a particular
being constituted prior to the relations with the Son and the Holy
Spirit;308 to guarantee the affirmation of the superiority of the Father
only on the level of the mode of hypostasising nature; and to guarantee
that not even the persons are thought of as prior to nature.309
For Zizioulas:

The co-emergence of divine nature with the Trinitarian

existence initiated by the Father implies that the Father, too,
‘acquires’, so to speak, deity only ‘as’ the Son and the Spirit
are in existence (he is inconceivable as Father without them),
that is, only ‘when’ divine nature is ‘possessed’ by all three.310

be said of a divine essence’ (F.-X. Durrwell, Le Père: Dieu en son mystère

[Paris: Cerf, 1993], pp. 139–40).
304.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 129.
305.
Ibid., p. 140.
306.
Cf. ibid.
307.
Ibid.
308.
Cf. ibid., p. 130.
309.
Zizioulas denies that ‘the persons have an ontological priority over the one
substance of God’ (‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, p. 134). As already
noted, Zizioulas is asserting that the persons (in the plural) do not have
ontological priority over the one substance, that is, that they do not come
before, ontologically or logically, the substance. This does not mean that
the person does not have ontological priority (or primacy) over substance,
as the ontological principle of its mode of existence.
310.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 140.
218 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

This idea, specified in ‘The Father as Cause’, and therefore not from
the beginning of his studies, expresses a vision that is at the opposite
pole to that of the Father as dictated otherness. The Father is Father
when he is in the fullness of divinity, and he is in that fullness only in
relation to the Son and the Holy Spirit. These exist, they are, when they
are in the fullness of divinity and, at the same time, they are in that
fullness because of their being caused as otherness by the Father. In this
way, for Zizioulas, ‘trinitarian ordering (τάξις) and causation protect
rather than threaten the equality and fullness of each person’s deity’.311

Non-localisation by the Father of the Nature Primarily

in His Person
The affirmation of the co-emergence of the divine nature with the
trinitarian existence guarantees the consubstantiality of the Three: each
‘acquires’ divinity to the extent that he ‘acquires’ trinitarian existence,
i.e. by being personal. Each one is – is God – because of the fact that the
other two are – are God. The Father differs from the Son and the Holy
Spirit in that he is, by the hypostatic property of his mode of being as an
uncaused cause, the primary reality of trinitarian existence, that is, of
personal being, and therefore of being other.
However, if the Father is understood as the ultimate giver of otherness,
Zizioulas acknowledges an involvement of substance in the process of
causing otherness originating from the Father. Moreover, although
Zizioulas strongly defends the idea that the Father is cause only and

311.
Ibid. Koutloumousianos affirms, against Zizioulas, that the divinity of the
Father depends on the Son, and that therefore the trinitarian existence
cannot be founded on the will of the Father, and that nature, in Zizioulas,
has a subsidiary function (cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and the
Three, p. 42). As we have seen, even for Zizioulas the divinity of the Father
depends on that of the Son, but this is not in contradiction with the fact that
the Father is the primary reality of trinitarian existence; indeed, the Father
constitutes the ontological foundation of relational existence. As for the
subsidiary function of nature, the following must be clarified. First, it is not
recognised as having any causal role; it co-emerges with personal being,
and this co-emergence has a personal ‘pull’: ‘Divine nature exists only
when and as the Trinity emerges’ (‘The Father as Cause’, p. 140). However,
nature is recognised as having an active role – nature relates persons – as
well as expressing what is common and wholeness, since the person is the
hypostasisation of nature in its totality, according to a unique mode of
existence.
The Father as the One 219

exclusively with regard to otherness, what he causes is a consubstantial

otherness.312 The link between causation and substance is not to be
understood as a ‘transmission’313 of nature, since the Father does not
possess substance in advance,314 but as a non-localisation of substance:
‘only as a person and for the sake of personhood the Father guards against
locating substance primarily in himself’.315 This understanding of the
Father in relation to nature ties in with what has been observed by
Zizioulas in reference to the personhood of the Father. The affirmation of
the Father as a perpetual exodus from the self to existence for the other,
which affirms the other, also implies the affirmation of the Father as
an existence that avoids locating nature primarily in himself. Zizioulas
presents this idea according to a formulation in negative terms, as can
be deduced from the use of the verb avoid; in positive terms, the non-
localisation of nature primarily in the Father is to be understood in relation
to the affirmation – as we have seen – of nature put/held/possessed in
common.316 From this it can be deduced that the Father makes it possible
for the other persons to hypostasise the divine nature, according to their
own mode, so that they too hold it in common with the others: the person
‘expresses his free particularity and identity not by opposing the essence,
but by holding it in common with the other persons’.317 This means, as
Papanikolaou points out, that for Zizioulas the person possesses the

312.
‘The “cause” of a personal identity brings forth, “causes”, fully other, that is,
ontologically free and fully equal, identities’ (ibid., p. 144).
313.
Ibid., p. 130.
314.
The Father is God ‘not because he holds the divine essence and transmits it’
(ibid.).
315.
Ibid.
316.
When Zizioulas writes, with regard to the fact that hypostatic properties
are incommunicable, that ousia is ‘communicated among’ the Three (cf.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 160), he
does not mean, contrary to repeated statements, a transmission of nature
by the Father to the other two persons, but possession/communication.
Being communicated/communicable (at the intra-trinitarian level) is for
Zizioulas a characteristic of a hypostasised, personal, and not impersonal
nature. When it is impersonal, it is incommunicable: ‘the ultimate
ontological category that makes something is really not an impersonal and
incommunicable “substance” … but the person’ (‘Introduction’, in L’être
ecclésial, p. 13).
317.
«Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 17; for the expression
‘holding in common’, cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 51.
220 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

fullness of nature in communion,318 and that the Father is the person

who realises the fullness of his nature, avoiding locating it primarily in
himself, but existing for the other, making the affirmation of the other the
purpose of his own being, constituting himself the ontological principle
of the absolute otherness of the other, and therefore of the freedom of the
other. If the person holds the substance in common, existing personally,
for Zizioulas not only do the Three co-emerge with nature, but also the
Three co-emerge precisely by virtue of the primary role of the Father.

Hypostasisation of Nature in Its Totality

The Father, by not locating nature primarily in himself, and by
holding it in common with the other two persons, ensures that in God
nature is expressed not by one person, since this would correspond
to individualism, but by three persons, since there is co-emergence of
nature with trinitarian existence, and by each of them, since otherness
is the primary ontological notion. This has to do with the causality
of the Father, who expresses his nature by making his existence the
ontological principle of trinitarian existence, i.e. by existing trinitarily,
as three persons who possess the fullness of the one nature. Therefore,
the concept of non-localisation of nature corresponds to holding
nature in common, as the hypostasisation of the one and undivided
nature, and therefore as the coincidence of the person with nature. The
hypostasisation of the one and undivided nature is due to the personal,
relational, ecstatic aspect of the Father.319 Zizioulas writes that ‘the
person in its ekstatic character reveals its being in a catholic, that is,
integral and undivided, way, and thus in its being ekstatic it becomes
hypostatic, that is, the bearer of its nature in its totality’.320 Hence, ‘the
three persons of the Trinity do not share a pre-existing or logically
prior to them divine nature, but coincide with it’.321 The affirmation of
the non-localisation of nature primarily in the Father, as well as of the
Father who perpetually exists as an exit from the self in order to exist for
the other, reveals the notion of person as a unique mode of existence of
nature in its totality, as a personal/relational fact proper to a particular

318.
Cf. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 136.
319.
Consequently, as we shall see more clearly in the next chapter, of the Son
and the Holy Spirit who have as the ontological principle of their being the
personal/relational/aesthetic being of the Father.
320.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 213. Wholeness as catholicity and totality are notions that almost coincide.
321.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159.
The Father as the One 221

being, which is affirmed as a unique alterity and, in turn, affirms unique

alterity. Finally, the non-localisation of nature also implies its non-
fragmentation, which would imply individualism. On the level of nature
too, therefore, the Father is the one who preserves trinitarian existence
from individualism.

Person and Nature

Considering what has been said so far, it is now possible to understand
better the relationship between person and nature in Zizioulas. The
person is the hypostasisation of nature in its totality, its mode of exis-
tence,322 it is ecstatic, relational: ‘Personhood … is the mode in which
nature exists in its ekstatic movement of communion in which it is
hypostasized in its catholicity.’323 Zizioulas therefore does not see
any break between the two terms in the Trinity. Nature exists only
as hypostasis,324 which is why he talks about hypostatic or personal
nature,325 endowed with movement.326 If nature exists ecstatically, it
is by virtue of the Father who ‘becomes’ the ontological principle of
trinitarian existence: ‘there is no antinomy between nature and person
precisely because the divine persons do not derive from divine nature
but from a divine person (the Father), and also because each person
bears divine substance in its totality and not partially.’327
This makes person and nature co-primary/co-fundamental from an
ontological point of view, in the sense that both, and together, denote
being,328 although there is an asymmetrical relationship between them,
indeed precisely because of this asymmetry.329 If person and nature
co-emerge, the person – in particular the Father, but also the caused
person – possesses an ontological priority over nature. If Zizioulas
affirms that person and nature co-emerge, he also affirms that it is in
the emergence of the trinitarian existence that nature emerges and not

322.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 102.
323.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 245.
324.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 90.
325.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 28.
326.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 97.
327.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 197. We have seen how Zizioulas has in fact linked
the two aspects – the derivation from the person and the hypostasisation of
nature in its totality – making the first an ontological principle of the other.
328.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 25.
329.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 109.
222 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

vice versa. It is in ‘acquiring’ personal being that the person ‘acquires’

divinity and not vice versa. However, this ontological priority of the
person, and the assumption that the person is not without nature,
representing its mode of existence, does not exclude, indeed implies, an
‘active’ role of nature: the fact that the person makes nature relational330
makes it possible for nature to relate persons,331 contrary to what happens
in creation where fragmented nature separates persons. In other words,
the co-emergence of person and nature is to be understood within the
framework of the causal role of the person that grounds the active role
of nature. This is what Zizioulas states when he talks about the person
as the ecstasy and hypostasis of nature. This being so, ‘theological
personalism is meant to affirm, not to diminish, the dynamism of
nature … by making the person move and raise nature above nature
(ὑπὲρ φύσιν)’,332 towards existence as existence for the other. Thus, we
come to the following aspect.

The Irreducibility of the Person to the Equality of Nature

The cause and purpose of existence is the other,333 particularity and
not equality. This does not mean that equality is an obstacle or an
unnecessary element for the affirmation of otherness; on the contrary,
the two terms form an ‘organic and indestructible unity’.334 Otherness
and equality are both elements that qualify the person. We have seen how
Zizioulas stated in relation to the Father that ‘the “cause” of a personal
identity brings forth, “causes”, fully other, that is, ontologically free and
fully equal, identities’.335 Now, what is particular (the person) is not a
reality alongside what is equal (nature), but is equality in its existence,
which is an existence in a unique way. This is how Zizioulas arrives, in
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, at the notion of irreducibility, where he writes

330.
‘God’s nature is hypostatic, or personal, that is, because it possesses a
“mode of being” ’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 28).
331.
‘The function, therefore, of nature is this and nothing else: to relate the
hypostases to each other’ (‘Person and Nature’, p. 90).
332.
Ibid., p. 112. Zizioulas points out that the idea of the ὑπὲρ φύσιν is proper
to the Christological perspective of Maximus the Confessor.
333.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, pp. 68, 89.
334.
‘Person and Nature’, p. 88.
335.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 144; my italics. Zizioulas’ assertion that the Father
does not cause identity, in the sense of ousia, but otherness, in the sense of
person (cf. ibid., p. 130) must be understood in light of the assertion that the
Father causes consubstantial otherness.
The Father as the One 223

that ‘freedom, therefore, in its trinitarian sense is not a freedom from

but for the other to the point of raising the other to the status of absolute
uniqueness irreducible to the sameness of nature’.336 Freedom from the
equality of nature is not presented as the liberation from what is common
to persons, and which finds its ontological foundation in the Father, but
the existence as a unique entity in the equality of nature which, as such,
is irreducible to this equality. What is common is good but, as we have
seen with regard to Maximus the Confessor, what is particular, and what
is unthinkable without what is common, is more than what is common.
Zizioulas took from Lossky the notion of irreducibility in reference to
the person to describe the relationship of the latter with nature,337 although
this does not seem to constitute a new idea in his thought but rather an
explanatory element that escapes possible misunderstanding about his
vision of freedom, understood as freedom from nature.338 That said, it
should be noted that Lossky’s statement is precisely: ‘“Person” signifies the
irreducibility of man to his nature.’339 Zizioulas’ statement, namely that the
person is otherness irreducible to the equality of nature, is slightly different.
The former, as Lossky himself goes on to say, welds the terms ‘person’
and ‘nature’ more closely together and gives greater prominence to the
person’s irreducible being. Now, if for Zizioulas, in line with the Confessor,
the person hypostasises/transcends nature/is irreducible to the equality
of nature,340 to say that the person is the hypostasisation/transcendence of
nature (objective genitive) and is irreducible to nature would highlight
more the intimate relationship between person and nature. The same
applies to the idea of the person as the ‘impression’ of nature’s mode of
existence; this would be formulated more precisely by stating that the
person is the hypostasisation of nature, rather than the person hypostasising
nature, and would thus better avoid the risk of ‘temporal’, ‘consequential’
understandings of the relationship between person and nature, between

336.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 197.
337.
In ibid. he mentions V. Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God (Crestwood,
NY: St Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1974), p. 120.
338.
Papanikolaou also seems to have fallen into this misunderstanding (cf.
Being with God, p. 132).
339.
Lossky, In the Image and Likeness of God, p. 120. The statement is also
applicable in the trinitarian context.
340.
Existence includes more than being and the principle of personal being
(hypostasis) transcends the limits of nature (cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 25;
Zizioulas quotes L. Thunberg, Microcosm and Mediator: The Theological
Anthropology of Maximus the Confessor (Chicago: La Salle, 1995), pp. 89f.).
224 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

cause and caused. Moreover, there is nowhere in Zizioulas the postulation

of a person who first is and then hypostasises, nor who first is and then
causes, nor who first is and then is caused. On the contrary, for Zizioulas,
freedom is not something the person has (although he also expresses
himself in these terms), but something the person is: the person is freedom.
Freedom therefore acquires a hypostatic character and does not abandon
its substantial character at all, the person being nature’s mode of existence:
the person is nature in its free mode of existence.341

Critique
What has just been said would seem to suggest the way to understand
Zizioulas’ claims about ousia as a reality possessed by hypostasis. As we
have seen, they provoke in Loudovikos the perception of the application
of an Aristotelian/neoplatonic scheme of the ‘above-under’ type, which,
through the attribution of ontological primacy to the person, with the
supposed devaluation of nature, is also coloured by existentialism/
idealism.342 According to Loudovikos, for Zizioulas the person is a subject
who stands above nature, possesses it authoritatively and must then be
freed from it. The possession Zizioulas talks about seems to escape an
authoritative meaning, since in reference to nature – and in this case
personalised nature – he speaks, as we have seen, of fullness. He states that
‘unity of nature provides sameness and wholeness’,343 which is hypostatic
fullness, and thus being other in an absolute ontological sense, while
existing in relation. In Zizioulas, the idea of nature as something possessed
by the person is to be understood in reference to the state of hypostatic
fullness, which finds its ontological foundation in the Father and which
also involves nature, since in the emergence of trinitarian existence, the
divinity of the Three emerges. This idea seems perhaps not so distant from
that of Loudovikos himself, for whom homoousion represents ‘the mutual
dialogical affirmation/fulfilment of otherness on the level of nature’.344

341.
However, it should be noted that this is the perspective Zizioulas suggests
in his later writings (cf. ‘Person and Nature’, pp. 85–113). Statements like
the ones above, such as ‘nature with hypostasis indicates freedom’ (cf.
‘Personhood and Being’, p. 44), may, if they reveal that for Zizioulas nature
does not indicate necessity in God, suggest a view in which the terms nature
and person are still rather distant from each other.
342.
Cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 264; a similar criticism is
also made by Larchet, Personne et nature, p. 262.
343.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, 206.
344.
Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 270.
The Father as the One 225

In the light of all this, it can be concluded that the terminology of

possession remains largely problematic and therefore should not be
emphasised. On the other hand, one must focus on the fact that for
Zizioulas the person possesses a nature, but also that nature possesses
a mode of existence (and thus a hypostasis) and, above all, that in God
person and nature coincide.345 This in no way excludes the possibility
that one constitutes the ontological principle of the other. The fact that
an ontological priority of one term over the other is postulated does
not necessarily mean that there is opposition between them;346 on the
contrary, a relationship of ontological constitution is affirmed between
them, in which one is the mode of existence of the other, so as to make it
be as uniqueness.

Divine Substance as an Ontological Communion of Personal Love

We have seen above how Zizioulas talks about nature as both necessitated
and free. In the first case, he refers to nature as it is considered by
classical Greek thought, medieval scholasticism, modern philosophy,
patristics (with regard to the anthropological level after the Fall), and
by way of hypothesis at the trinitarian level (in its anhypostatic state).347
On the other hand, Zizioulas talks about divine nature as endowed with
movement,348 freedom and will,349 when considered in its hypostasised
state, i.e. as personalised nature.350 Moreover, nature is considered as a
universal abstract when it is considered in itself, a state that it abandons
when it is hypostasised,351 in which case it exists as a hypostasis, in that it
is characterised by a mode of existence, and thus by an ecstatic existence,
‘freed’ from the necessity of monadic self-existence.352 Hence nature is
understood by Zizioulas both as a monistic category, when considered

345.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159.
346.
Cf. Larchet, Personne et nature, p. 233.
347.
Zizioulas makes this clear in his ‘Person and Nature’. On the trinitarian
aspect, given its importance, I quote Zizioulas’ own words: ‘As to the
application of necessity to God’s nature, all statements in my writings
which speak of “necessity” in divine nature presuppose the hypothesis
that divine nature is conceived apart from or prior to divine personhood’
(‘Person and Nature’, p. 107).
348.
Cf. ibid., p. 97.
349.
Cf. ibid., p. 107.
350.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 65; ‘Person and Nature’, p. 91.
351.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 90.
352.
Cf. ibid., pp. 112–13.
226 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

in itself, and as a relational one, when considered in its hypostasised

state. In the first case, for Zizioulas, ‘nature implies necessity by
definition and therefore, even if it is fundamentally good, it is not free,
it cannot transcend the givenness of its own existence and rise above
itself by virtue of its own powers’.353 In the second case, he states that ‘to
say that the Son belongs to the substance of God implies that substance
possesses almost by definition a relational character’.354
For Zizioulas, substance is a category that expresses the unity of God,
insofar as it is rooted in the personal being of the Trinity that has the Father
as its cause. The person raises the general to the particular, that is, to the
status of primary ontological category, since, as we have seen, the origin
and purpose of existence, of being, is the other. The One, the ontological
principle of trinitarian being, is a person, the Father, since the person,
unlike nature, is inconceivable without a relation, that is, not as otherness.355
The person, inconceivable without substance, unlike substance (in itself
considered), is not a ‘self-existent’356 being, monadically understood.
In the Trinity person and nature coincide and their relationship is to
be understood, as we have seen, in the following terms: ‘Personhood … is
the mode in which nature exists in its ekstatic movement of communion
in which it is hypostasized in its catholicity.’357 Zizioulas talks about
divine unity, first of all, as personal unity, that is, as unity in the form
of otherness,358 and, consequently, as relational unity,359 better specified

353.
«Χριστολογία καὶ Ὕπαρξη», p. 81. Zizioulas reiterates this notion: ‘substance
is a monistic category by definition (there can only be one substance and no
other in God)’ (‘On Being Other’, pp. 34–35).
354.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 73.
355.
Nature, in God, if it is not considered in itself, that is, anhypostatically, is
inconceivable without otherness (the Son belongs to the substance of God).
356.
‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 162.
We have seen how, with regard to the Confessor (chapter I, section ‘The
Will and Natural Freedom, the Active Role of Ousia and the Ontological
Primacy of Hypostasis’), Zizioulas spoke of hypostasis as a self-existent
being, to indicate its ontological priority over ousia, without implying,
on the contrary, an a-relational or non-relational existence, and therefore
according to a different meaning from the one used here.
357.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 245.
358.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 146; cf. also ibid., p. 150; ‘On Being Other’,
pp. 74–75.
359.
Cf. ‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 7.
The Father as the One 227

as unity of personal derivation,360 as well as perichoretic and substantial

unity.361 Considering that personal being is the way in which nature
exists in its ecstatic movement of communion, and is hypostasised
in its catholicity, what we have is that relational unity is connected to
relational substance. In this regard, the question arises: ‘Is there such a
thing as relational substance, relational oneness etc.?’362 Relational unity,
unity in the form of otherness and unity of nature are not alternatives
to each other, or in opposition, because ‘person and essence are not in
conflict’.363 Therefore, the fact that the ‘love that hypostasizes God is not
something “common” to the three Persons, like the divine nature, but is
identified with the Father’364 is not in contrast, indeed, with the fact that
‘love … is common to the three persons, that is, it refers to the essence
or nature of God’.365 The same applies to freedom, which is identified
with love. It is primarily identified with the Father, since ‘freedom is
combined with love (relationship) and the two together are identified

360.
Cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 119.
361.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 106–7.
362.
‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today’, in The One and the Many, p. 7.
363.
«Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 17.
364.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, pp. 97–98. Cf. Being and Communion, p. 46, n. 41.
365.
«Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 17. The statement ‘love is
not a consequence or a property of the divine substance’ (Ἡ ἀγάπη δὲν
εἶναι ἀπόρροια ἤ ἰδιότης τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Θεοῦ [«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς
πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου, p. 97]), although it should
be considered in its context – i.e. as the emphasis of love in its hypostatic
meaning – remains problematic. It is probably an expression of the, at times,
imprecision with which Zizioulas expressed himself in his early writings,
giving the impression, perhaps partly justified, of a personalist vision still
to be refined. However, it is difficult to agree with Koutloumousianos when
he states that for Zizioulas love – this also applies to freedom and will – is
hypostatic and not substantial (cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and the
Three, p. 19). Precisely because of the coincidence of person and nature,
of which the Father for Zizioulas is the ontological foundation, love and
freedom are referred to ousia, and therefore common to the Three. Love and
freedom are natural properties that have existence and mode of existence
only at the personal level, primarily (not in the temporal sense but according
to the mode of hypostasisation), of the Father – as the one who generates and
makes proceed – and so also of the Son and the Holy Spirit.
228 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

with the Father’,366 and likewise with substance, since ‘freedom is a

quality of God’s very substance’.367 Hence, ‘God’s substance and His
freedom “concur” and coincide’.368
Maximus the Confessor, as noted by Zizioulas, recognises that
nature, both divine and human, is endowed with a movement,369 which
is relational: hypostasis represents the ontological principle of the mode
of existence of ousia,370 and ousia, characterised by this mode, relates
hypostaseis to each other.371 This understanding, although clarified in
2013 in ‘Person and Nature’,372 has been present since ‘Personhood and
Being’ in 1985.373

366.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 187.
367.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 195.
368.
Ibid. Both love and freedom are predictable in relation to the person as well
as to nature. In this way, one overcomes the difficulty that, for example,
Ierotheos Vlachos encounters and which consists in not being able to
attribute love to nature and freedom to personal quality (cf. Vlachos, Το
πρόσωπο στην ορθόδοξη παράδοση, p. 241).
369.
‘Nature, whether divine or human, is marked with movement. And while
in God’s nature this movement exhausts, so to say, itself in God Himself,
in the human being it is directed towards God, its Creator, seeking its rest
(στάσις) in Him’ (‘Person and Nature’, pp. 97–98).
370.
‘Substance is relational not in itself but in and through and because of “the
mode of being” it possesses’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 25).
371.
‘The function, therefore, of nature is exclusively to relate the hypostases to
each other, to make them relational’ (‘Person and Nature’, p. 90). In this
way, Zizioulas affirms precisely what Loudovikos reproaches him for not
affirming, namely, that nature participates in the definition of personal
otherness and vice versa (cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’,
p. 266). Moreover, Loudovikos, on the anthropological level, objects that
the implementation of the relationality in which nature is involved requires
an ascetic effort. However, this is also what Zizioulas claims. Even on the
intra-trinitarian level, while it is certainly not possible to speak of an ascetic
effort, Zizioulas links, as we have seen, the ‘acquisition’ of divinity by the
Father to its full possession by the Son and the Holy Spirit, which is realised
as the actualisation of the trinitarian relational-communal being, initiated
by the Father (cf. ‘The Father as Cause’, p. 140).
372.
Cf. ‘Person and Nature’, p. 107.
373.
‘God’s nature does not exist “naked”, i.e., without hypostases. … It is this
that makes it free. “Naked” nature or ousia by indicating being qua being
points not to freedom but to ontological necessity’ (‘Personhood and Being’,
The Father as the One 229

On the basis of all this, Zizioulas identifies the divine nature with
communion. Noting that Athanasius affirmed that the Son belongs to the
substance of God, and how this gave rise to a relational understanding
of substance, he concludes:

If by nature God’s being is relational and if we can indicate this

by the word ‘substance’, should we not then conclude almost
inevitably that – given the final character of God’s being
for all ontology – substance, insofar as it indicates the final
character of being, can only be conceived as communion?374

As noted, this does not mean de-substantialising the notion of substance.

The notion of communion is situated within the notion of substance and,
as Zizioulas points out, ‘communion does not belong to the level of will and
action, but to that of substance’.375 At the same time, the notion of substance
is also located within the notion of communion. As Zizioulas again observes,
‘the substance of God, “God”, has no ontological content, has no true being
except as communion’.376 Placing the notion of communion within the notion
of substance, and vice versa, means that substance does not imply necessity
and communion does not imply contingency. Yet, all this is brought back
to the causality of the Father, for ‘the one divine substance is consequently
the being of God, solely because it possesses these three modes of existence,
which it owes not to the essence but to a person, the Father’,377 ‘just as
“substance”, “communion”, does not exist by itself: it is the Father who is its
“cause”’.378 The guarantor of non-necessity and non-contingency, as we have
seen to this point, is the Father because of his principiality, which makes
his existence the ontological foundation of personal being, which expresses
communion in otherness not as a necessary fact (because it is other, and in

in Being as Communion, p. 44). Thus, hypostasised nature is characterised

by freedom. The words we have quoted are not present in the original Greek
version of the text («Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.),
Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου), an indication, probably, that it was important for
Zizioulas to clarify this point, thus refining his personalism as he goes along.
374.
‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 73.
375.
Ibid., p. 74. We have seen how Zizioulas traces this assumption back to
Athanasius’ teaching.
376.
‘Introduction’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 13.
377.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 91.
378.
‘Introduction’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 13.
230 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

being other is ontological freedom) and not as a contingent fact (because

it is ‘hypostatic fullness’, as ‘fulfilment of being’ ‘beyond choice’).379 In
Zizioulas’ words, ‘the ultimate ontological category that makes something
really exist, is neither an impersonal and incommunicable “substance”, nor
a structure of communion presupposed by itself or imposed by necessity,
but the person’.380 The person, however, coincides with substance – it is the
hypostasisation of substance in its totality – and this hypostasisation takes
place as the implementation of personal being, that is, of communion. The
person coincides, therefore, also with communion, insofar as ‘personhood
stands for otherness and plurality’.381 If for Zizioulas substance coincides
with communion – ‘the nature of God is communion’382 – we also find that
‘nature or substance coincides fully with personhood’.383 This aspect is noted
by Ioannis Spiteris, who writes that ‘the substance of God is his trinitarian
being’;384 ‘the substance of God is his being Person … his being is his eternal
interchange of trinitarian love’;385 ‘the essence of God is not substance but
person’;386 ‘the “substance” of God is his being in “communion”’.387

379.
In the next chapter we shall consider how Zizioulas understands ontological
freedom with reference to human beings.
380.
‘Introduction’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 13. Note that the negative character of the
substance is attributed to substance in its impersonal, i.e. non-hypostasised,
state.
381.
‘Uniformity, Diversity and Unity of the Church’, in The One and the Many,
p. 336.
382.
‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, p. 134.
383.
‘On Being Other’, p. 64.
384.
Cf. Spiteris, ‘La dottrina trinitaria nella teologia ortodossa’, p. 50. Spiteris
refers this expression both to Zizioulas and Yannaras and to the theologians
by whom their thinking has been influenced, such as S.N. Bulgakov, V.
Lossky, P. Evdokimov and D. Stăniloae.
385.
Ibid., p. 52.
386.
Ibid., p. 53. This statement is in line with Zizioulas’ thinking if ‘substance’
is understood as monistical and not relational.
387.
Ibid., p. 66. Michel Stavrou too has understood this point: the ousia is
personal being considered in the three modes of existence (cf. M. Stavrou,
‘Le fondement de la personnéité: la théologie trinitaire dans la pensée de
Jean Zizioulas’, Contacts 48, no. 4 [1996], pp. 268–91, at p. 272). Indeed,
Zizioulas states that the essential and the existential coincide (cf. ‘The
Pneumatological Dimension of the Church’, in The One and the Many,
pp. 79–80). In this sense, Agouridis’ criticism, which Zizioulas rejects, that
for the latter the divine essence is its existence, is not so unfounded (cf. «Τὸ
The Father as the One 231

Bearing in mind what has been said, we are left with the affirmation
that what unites the Son to the Father is not the patristic notion of
‘community of nature’, but the Father’s way of being388 does not exclude
nature from the definition of unity, since the person is understood as
that particular being which supports its own nature in a unique way.389
In this regard, Chrysostom Koutloumousianos admits that person
indicates relationship, but then states that, if persons are in communion
on the hypostatic plane, they are confused.390 Here, as Romilo Knežević
has pointed out, we must reply that in Zizioulas communion, precisely
because it is understood primarily on the hypostatic plane, ensures that
persons are not confused, since it is the person, and not the substance,
that expresses both communion and otherness.391
In conclusion, Zizioulas seeks to provide a trinitarian vision of the
One and the Many, in which the Three exist as One and Many both
in a personal sense (the Father is Trinity,392 insofar as his identity is
conditioned by the Many,393 and the Son and the Holy Spirit are led by
the Father to exist as One and Many)394 and in a substantial sense (by the
fact both that the Three are one substance395 and that each coincides with

εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου», p. 17; Agouridis, «Μποροῦν
τὰ πρόσωπα τῆς Τριάδας νὰ δώσουν τὴ βάση γιὰ Περσοναλιστικὲς ἀπόψεις
περὶ τοῦ ἀνθρώπου;», p. 68). The question is whether, in this way, Zizioulas
affirms the non-substantial character of divine existence or not. A similar
criticism is made by Stavrou. For him, identifying communion with
substance deprives the person of their quiddity and identifies the ‘how’
with the ‘what’ (cf. Stavrou, ‘Le fondement de la personnéité’, p. 281).
388.
Cf. ‘Vérité et communion’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 107.
389.
Cf. ibid., p. 94. We have seen how Zizioulas talks about divine unity in
substantive terms. In any case, to avoid misunderstanding, to have
expressed it as ‘what unites the Son to the Father is the Father’s way of being
that guarantees the community of nature’ would have been more precise.
390.
Cf. Koutloumousianos, The One and the Three, p. 46.
391.
Cf. Knežević, ‘Homo Theurgos’, p. 25. He pertinently points out that
substance – considered as non-hypostasised – is a monistic category
precisely because it is unable to express otherness and communion.
392.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 95.
393.
‘The Mystery of the Church in Orthodox Tradition’, p. 142.
394.
‘[T]he Father freely brings them into being simultaneously as “one” and
“many” ’ (‘On Being Other’, p. 57).
395.
Cf. ibid., p. 56.
232 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the one substance)396. In this sense, while not rejecting the possibility of
speaking of the divine unity in terms of substance, Zizioulas distances
himself from Loudovikos,397 according to whom the difference between
the Plotinian Triad and the Trinity lies in the homoousion. For Zizioulas,
it lies in the Father, and therefore in the way of conceiving the One as a
personal being. From this we get that the Father, a person, in the sense of a
relational being, is the One – One of the Many is the One of the Many – and
this makes it possible for homoousion and koinōnia to express the unity/
oneness of God. For Zizioulas, the Father is the ontological principle of the
personal mode of nature, which makes the particular being, elevated to
the constitutive of being, the hypostasisation of nature in its totality, and
therefore consubstantial with the other beings with which it shares nature
and to which it is ontologically related. For Zizioulas, nature does not only
indicate equality, sameness – a concept that is not static, however, since
it is traced back to the process of derivation of consubstantial otherness
caused by the Father – but also fullness, wholeness, which is hypostatic
fullness. In this sense, homoousia is the purpose – the ‘goal’ – of personal
activity as Loudovikos believes, personally, in the sense of the ‘wholeness’.

One Trinitarian Principle of the Triune and One Being

of God: The Father as Existence for the Other for the
Sake of Personal Reality
The concept of freedom elaborated by Zizioulas is to be understood, in its
fundamental meaning, as freedom for, or existence for the other, which
transcends the boundaries of the self, and this is primarily the freedom
of the Father. In this way, the ontological principle of the being of the
Son and the Holy Spirit is a personal, non-necessitated being, which
affirms them as unique othernesses. The freedom of their constitution
grounds the constitution of their freedom, the personhood of their
principle grounds the personhood of their being: ‘the freedom of God
is the freedom of the Father’. The freedom of the Father is understood
as that which guarantees not only the extraneousness of necessity but
also of contingency to the divine being. For Zizioulas, contingency in
God is not ‘the logical alternative’ to necessity. The alternative to both
is precisely personal being, as the eternal transcendence of the necessity

396.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 107.
397.
Cf. Loudovikos, ‘Possession or Wholeness?’, p. 267.
One Trinitarian Principle of the Being of God 233

of ‘ “totalizing” substantialism’ and the contingency of ‘ “liberating”

fragmentation’, which is difficult to be thought of for the mind marked
by ‘our experience of fragmented time’ and hence by individualism, and
which refers to the apophatic perspective, so to speak, of the hyper, of
Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite and Maximus the Confessor.
The Father is the one who elevates the other to a constitutive element
of being, and therefore to a primary ontological category, insofar as it is
affirmed by the Father as a unique otherness. This means that the Father
is the cause, in the sense that he is the ultimate giver of existence, which
is relational existence. If the Father originates personal being, we must
conclude that he inaugurates reciprocity. We have seen how Zizioulas
states that the Father causes the other and constitutes himself in relation
to the other. In this way, an aspect of both causativity and receptivity of
being is identified in the personhood of the Father: if he is immortal, it
is because his unique identity is affirmed by the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Having said this, Zizioulas considers it impossible to conceive from ‘our
experience of fragmented time’ that a cause is constituted in relation to
the caused, thus revealing that personhood is a notion pertaining to the
eschaton.
The Father is the principle of the Trinity, as well as of the unity of
God, since, by his hypostatic property, he is the primary reality of
God’s personal being, which guards against locating nature primarily
in himself, but, by constituting the origin of personal being, causes it
to co-emerge with the latter. In this way, divinity is linked to personal
being, and consequently nature is identified with communion. The
divinity is thus the figure of the personal being. The cause of the
Trinity and of unity in God is the Father, i.e. a person who exists as an
affirmation of the otherness of the Son and the Holy Spirit and who is
constituted by their personal being. They, having as their principle the
ontological freedom of ecstatic existence, which is the Father, exist as an
affirmation of his and others’ otherness. In this way, Zizioulas affirms
that in the Trinity there are not two principles (the Father and nature
or communion and nature) nor three principles (Father, Son and Holy
Spirit), but a single trinitarian principle of God’s personal being (the
Father as Trinity).
Having said that, a certain development of the Zizioulan vision has
been noted. Compared to «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον» (1977),
in ‘Personhood and Being’ (1985) he specifies that hypostasised nature
is free. If in the 1977 essay he states that love is a personal characteristic
of the Father, and not of nature, in «Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ
ἀνθρώπου» (1990) he corrects himself and acknowledges that love is
234 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

also a natural characteristic. In ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of

the Person’ (2006) he expunges the statement ‘the person precedes the
substance’ from the original text (1983). Only in ‘The Father as Cause’
(2006), the work in which he deals with the question of the ontological
monarchy of the Father in a more systematic way, does he specify that the
Father is the ultimate giver, the one who makes the Three, communion
and substance constitutive of being, and therefore primary, so as to
speak of unity in relational terms, of otherness and substance. It should
be added that in ‘The Father as Cause’ he addresses the question of the
relationship between the causality of the Father and the divine nature,
elaborating on the concepts of co-emergence and non-localisation, which
serve to show that the Father is the ontological principle of God, insofar
as he is a relational being who is constituted in relation to the Son and the
Holy Spirit. Moving on from this point, it has been noted that, although
from the outset Zizioulas understood ontological freedom as freedom
for, this idea has been clarified and developed progressively: in ‘Relational
Ontology’ (2010) he specifies that the affirmation of otherness corresponds
to an ‘existence for the other’; in ‘Trinitarian Freedom’ (2012) he deepens
this aspect. Thus, the notion of freedom from, certainly more present in
his earlier writings such as «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», takes
a back seat and is clarified as freedom from the self and as freedom, not
from nature, but from the equality of nature, in terms of irreducibility to
the equality of nature that echoes Lossky. In ‘Person and Nature’ (2013) he
sought to clarify his position on the mutual-asymmetrical dependence of
person and nature, and on the divine nature as endowed with freedom
and will.
 Chapter Four

The Freedom that ‘Springs from the Very

Way the Hypostases are Constituted’:
From the Freedom of the Father,
the Freedom of God

This final chapter will attempt to shed light on the notion of freedom in
reference to the divine person caused, respectively, of the Son and of the
Holy Spirit. At the level of creation, as has already been noted, the notion
of ontological freedom, from a qualitative point of view, is the same for
God and for humanity. It is freedom as an affirmation of uniqueness
(absolute in the case of God, relative to the Son in the case of human
beings), as existence for the other and with the other, beyond ‘ “totalizing”
substantialism’ and ‘ “liberating” fragmentation’. What is important
is to understand how givenness and necessity are not definitively, and
therefore necessarily, connected to creaturality. In the eschatological
state, man, being constituted as an identity that arises from a relationship
with a free person – the Father – does not lose his creaturality, on the
contrary he experiences it fully not as givenness, but as something willed
by God, in view of incorporation into his Son. Givenness and necessity
are connected, more precisely, to the non-coincidence of person and
nature, implied in creaturality in its non-personalised ontological status.
In creation there is no such coincidence, due to the fact that its being is
created. Creation, depending on the person (ultimately on the Father),
depends on a mode of existence as freedom. In the case of creation,
236 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

the affirmation of being, and hence ontological freedom, requires a

temporal ‘yes’, which is the outcome of a freedom that ‘takes the form’
of a choice. In God there is no need for a temporal ‘yes’, since the Son
has always been with the Father. Man, experiencing an already existing
God, albeit a ‘free and loving origin’, has to consent to his relational/
causal constitution: the exercise of his ontological freedom takes place in
the space-time coordinates, revealing the givenness of existence and the
necessity of a nature that is in itself mortal. In this lies the paradoxicality
of the human condition. This paradoxicality is inevitable if man is to
be guaranteed the possibility of freedom, since the latter requires the
ontological constitution of man as an absolute otherness with respect to
the ontological cause of his being – God – and therefore an otherness
that is not only referred to ‘how is’, i.e. to the mode of being (communal,
as divine persons have with each other), but also to ‘what is’, i.e. to nature,
which must be created, coming from nothing, with a beginning, and
therefore, in itself, mortal.1

Divine Personhood: Freedom as a Mode of Existence

Caused in the Timelessness of the Unity of Nature
We have seen that for Zizioulas the divine persons indicate the being
of God.2 More precisely, ‘each person of God is the entire being, not
a portion of the being of God’,3 according to the ‘mode in which each
person of God receives his existence from the others’.4 Each divine
person, as co-inhering otherness with the other two persons, coincides
with being.5 Receiving existence from the other two persons is therefore
part of the notion of the person as ontological freedom; connected to this
is the fact that communion ‘is a condition for the person’,6 since schesis
is constitutive of otherness.7 If the person can only be understood as
otherness, it follows that one cannot define what the person is but only

1.
Cf. Chiapetti, «La libertà di Dio è la libertà del Padre», ch. 7, section 2.
2.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 59.
3.
Ibid., p. 64.
4.
Ibid.
5.
Cf. ibid., p. 63.
6.
Ibid., p. 58. Note the terminological distinction between ‘condition’ (or
‘constitutive’) and ‘cause’.
7.
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity’, in Communion and Otherness,
p. 239.
Divine Personhood 237

who he is.8 The Father is self in affirming the unique otherness of the
Son and the Holy Spirit, and these are self in the primary relationship
with the Father, their free and loving origin. In this sense, absolute
uniqueness depends on the relationship,9 which is love freely given.10
The person as relational mode of being is a definition relative not only
to the Father, but to each of the Three.11 Since the mode of being, on the
basis of the Cappadocian distinction, is an ontological category, it follows
that the person, whether caused or uncaused, represents the ontological
principle of being12 that transcends the boundaries of the self, and thus
the ontological principle of being as freedom.
Furthermore, the Father is a free cause, insofar as personal
existence goes beyond ‘ “totalizing” substantialism’ and ‘ “liberating”
fragmentation’. It is on this basis that the assertion that the mode of
existence of the Father, principial with regard to the hypostatic property,
constitutes the ontological foundation of the filial (of the Son) and
proceeding (of the Holy Spirit) mode of existence is to be understood. On
this basis, each of the Three, as the principle of being as freedom, is free
and is freedom. Furthermore, existence that transcends the boundaries
of the self does not mean imposing itself on the other, but co-emerging
in relationship with the other;13 hence, the relational ontology is fully
affirmed, in which the Father is the primary ontological principle of this
co-emergence, in the sense that he gives priority to the other. Indeed,
ontological freedom does not consist in freedom of choice but in the
hypostatic fullness that coincides with eternal existence as uniquely
affirmed otherness. From this it follows that freedom is the ‘yes’ to this

8.
Cf. ‘Communion et altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse, p. 27.
9.
Cf. ‘On Being a Person’, in Communion and Otherness, pp. 111–12.
10.
Cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 168.
11.
Cf. ‘Appendix: Person and Individual’, p. 176. None of the Three is conceivable
as an ‘individual’, i.e. as an entity ontologically independent of other
individuals, or dependent on relations of necessity, and thus self-subsistent
(cf. ‘The Trinity and Personhood’, in Communion and Otherness, p. 159).
12.
Cf. «Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 91.
13.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 202. On this basis, it is difficult to agree, for
example, with Harrison, ‘Zizioulas on Communion and Otherness’, p. 279;
Groppe, ‘Creation Ex Nihilo and Ex Amore, p. 479; M. Rogers, ‘A Summary
and Critique of the Idea of Freedom in Zizioulas’ Being as Communion’, Thesis
submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Lambeth diploma, 2006,
according to whom for Zizioulas the Son and the Holy Spirit are not free.
238 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

fullness and is the prerogative of each of the Three. Zizioulas explains:

‘God has the freedom to say “yes”. The Father’s freedom is expressed
by saying “yes” to the Son, and the freedom of the Son is expressed in
saying “yes” to the Father.’14 In this sense, freedom ‘springs from the
very way the hypostases are constituted’,15 that is, from the relational
way, originating from the Father who exists as a paternal affirmation
of the other, which is a free affirmation, insofar as it is an existence that
transcends the boundaries of the self, and therefore not necessary, that
is, not due either to the emanation of nature or to the aseity that produces
aseity. The Father is therefore free, i.e. he is other, if he generates free
persons, i.e. other,16 full ontological integrity, as ontological principles of
being, according to their specific mode of existence, which is caused. The
‘discriminating’ aspect between the Father and the Son lies in the mode
of being, to which – one might say – the mode of freedom corresponds,
that is, the mode in which freedom is hypostasised.17
Freedom, while pertaining to the plane of nature,18 is primarily
connected to the plane of the person, i.e. the ontological principle
and mode of existence of nature. Nature for Zizioulas is unknowable,
since it is revealed only as a person,19 just as freedom is known only as

14.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 74.
15.
Communion and Otherness, p. 121.
16.
Cf. ‘Introduction’, in L’être ecclésial, p. 14. This point is taken up by R.
Knežević (Knežević, ‘Homo Theurgos’, p. 109). Douglas Farrow also talks
about the Son and the Holy Spirit as free persons, since their ontological
principle is personal freedom (D. Farrow, ‘Person and Nature: The
Necessity-Freedom Dialectic in John Zizioulas’, in D.H. Knight [ed.], The
Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church [Aldershot: Ashgate,
2007], pp. 109–123, at p. 111). Farrow also recognises that communion with
the Father perfects personhood (cf. ibid., p. 121).
17.
Let us recall Basil’s words : ‘For there is the Father, who possesses perfect
being, who needs nothing, the root and source of the Son and of the Holy
Spirit; there is the Son, the Word who lives in the fullness of divinity, the
begetting of the Father who needs nothing; there is also, in its completeness,
the Spirit, which is not a part of another, but is considered perfect and whole
in itself’ (Basil of Caesarea, Homily 24.4 [PG 31, 609B]).
18.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 195.
19.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 56–57. This is further confirmation
of the non-negative understanding of the divine nature (unless it is
considered, hypothetically, in its ‘naked’ state). This being so, I agree with
William P. Alston who defends the use of this category in the trinitarian,
pointing out that a negative understanding of it is due to the fact that it is
Divine Personhood 239

a particular mode of existence which, in the case of God, is paternal,

filial and proceeding. The timelessness of the Father’s causation of these
modes of existence means that they together constitute the way in which
God exists and thus the one Godhead.
If the freedom of God represents the mode of being of the one
nature and is constituted by the three modes of being of the three
persons, this is connected to the trinitarian taxis, which begins and
ends with the Father. The freedom of the Father differs from that
of the Son and the Holy Spirit not quantitatively (all Three are the
hypostasisation of nature in its totality), nor qualitatively (none of the
Three has to contend with the necessitating datum either of a previous
nature, or possessed primarily by the Father, or of the other as an
individual), but only by the mode of hypostasisation. As the Three
co-emerge, so too does the divine nature co-emerge with them; at the
same time – one might say – freedom co-emerges as a particular mode
of hypostasisation of nature.20 Moreover, this is in line with Basil’s
teaching on the co-presence and co-existence of the Three, 21 with
Nazianzen’s teaching on the glorification of a person that implies the
glorification of the Three, 22 and, more generally, with the affirmation
of the co-primacy of the Trinity and the unity of God.23

inferred from finite beings (cf. W.P. Alston, ‘Substance and the Trinity’,
in S. Davis, D. Kendall and G. O’Collins [eds], The Trinity: An
Interdisciplinary Symposium on the Trinity (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2002), pp. 179–201). However, in the Zizioulan perspective, this does
not detract from the fact that the divine nature is only revealed as a person.
Therefore, if it remains an ineliminable category for trinitarian dogma –
it indicates what is common, what provides the fullness and relates the
persons – it is brought back totally to that of person.
20.
We have seen how for Zizioulas the Father ‘acquires’ divinity – and therefore
free being – only when the Son and the Holy Spirit are (cf. ‘The Father as
Cause’, p. 140), that is, when they are free persons. For Zizioulas, nature
co-emerges with trinitarian existence and persons co-emerge with each
other. The causality implied in taxis refers only to the hypostatic property
of paternity, such that the Father, constituting himself in relation to the
caused, freely causes freedom (cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, pp. 203–4).
21.
Cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 189; Basil of Caesarea, De Spiritu
Sancto, I.3f. (PG 32, 72f.).
22.
Cf. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.11 (PG 36, 89A).
23.
Cf. ‘Uniformity, Diversity, and the Unity of the Church’, in The One and the
Many, p. 337.
240 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

A further consideration, useful for the present analysis, concerns the

trinitarian connotation of the notion of person. For Zizioulas, each of
the Three exists as one and many, and is identified with the communion
of the Three, and therefore with the Three, although he does not go into
this aspect in depth, considering it to be part of the apophatic attitude
of the Fathers, who were not afraid of falling into anthropomorphism
when speaking of the Trinity. Zizioulas therefore circumscribes the field
of reflection on the Trinity, stating that:

The only thing we can say about the Father, the Son and the
Spirit is that the Father is Unbegotten and that he is the Father
of the Son; the Son is begotten and is the Son of the Father;
and the Spirit ‘proceeds from’ the Father and that he is the
Spirit, not the Son.24

In this sense, the attempts of Dimitru Stăniloae, Jürgen Moltmann

and Jean Miguel Garrigues, unlike those of the Fathers, who saw the
danger of anthropomorphism in speaking of the Trinity:

constitute a considerable step beyond the Cappadocian Fathers

in that they indicate something positive about the how or
the content of the intra-Trinitarian relations on which the
Cappadocians constantly and persistently refused to speculate.
It is not accidental that the Fathers never said or implied any
positive thing about the content of the terms ‘Father’ or ‘Son’
(e.g., that ‘Father’ implies the begetting of a Son, hence the
Father is such ‘only in so far as he begets a Son’). The same is
true about the content of the word ‘Spirit’ (e.g., that he is ‘love’
etc.), or about the number 3 (a third person is necessary for a
complete existence).25

What Zizioulas says is indeed reflected in the Fathers, although, as

will be seen, John Damascene and Gregory Palamas, for example, went
further than the Cappadocians.

The Son from the Father

Zizioulas’ attention, within the framework of his reflection on
the ontological monarchy of the Father, is undoubtedly focused on the

24.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 78.
25.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 195, n. 44.
Divine Personhood 241

Father-Son relationship. The Father-Holy Spirit relationship appears

in the background, as does the determination of the place of the Holy
Spirit in the relationship between the Father and the Son. This is due,
in obedience to the Fathers, both to the consideration of the trinitarian
taxis, for which generation, on a logical level, comes before procession,
and to the apophatic approach to the mystery of God’s being, which
requires us to base ourselves only on what is revealed, respecting the
sobriety of the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed, without projecting
data relating to the economic Trinity into the immanent Trinity.
Nazianzen, in reference to the eternal generation of the Son, in fact
states:

How is he generated? I repeat it with the indignation that this

question deserves: the generation of God is to be honoured
with silence. It is already a great deal that you know that he
is begotten. As for how, we do not grant its understanding to
angels, much less to you.26

On this basis, Zizioulas proceeds with circumspection to reflect on

generation and the distinction between it and the procession of the
Holy Spirit.
Zizioulas, as has been said, considers that the trinitarian taxis is
primarily concerned with the immanent Trinity27 and, specifically, with
the hypostatic properties, which make it ‘logically’ possible for one person
to be before another.28 The meaning of this logical order is explored by
Zizioulas, especially on the basis of the teaching of Nazianzen regarding
the position of the Father and Nyssen regarding the position of the Son
and the Holy Spirit. The trinitarian taxis, as Nazianzen states, originates
in the union that is the Father and leads to these.29 The Son, as Nyssen

26.
Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 29.8 (PG 36, 84).
27.
Cf. ‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203. Zizioulas cites Justin, Apologia pro
Christianis, I.13 (PG 6, 345B-48A); Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium,
III.1 (PG 29, 656A); I.20 (PG 29, 556–57); Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio
42.15 (PG 36, 476AB); Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 21 (PG 45, 133B).
28.
‘The one who generates is first, for it cannot be logically placed after the
generated one’ (‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 203).
29.
‘The union is the Father, from whom comes and to whom is led back what
follows (ἑξῆς)’ (Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 [PG 36, 476B]).
Zizioulas reports the term τάξις instead of ἑξῆς (cf. ‘The Father as Cause’,
pp. 137–38).
242 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

states, comes second because he ‘derives immediately from the first’ –

προσεχῶς ἐκ τοῦ πρώτου – as ‘only-begotten’ – μονογενὲς.30 Zizioulas
points out that the term μονογενής, ‘in Johannine literature, does not
only mean that the Father generates the Son in a unique way, but also
that he is “the one who is beloved in a unique way” ’.31 The Son therefore
comes immediately from the Father, inasmuch as he is loved in a unique
way, and this is a prerogative only of the Son, as Zizioulas points out:
‘God the Father loves only one Person, that is his Son.’32 Generation is
therefore to be understood as an affirmation of unique otherness, on
the part of that existence for the other which is the Father. As for it,
Zizioulas excludes a participation of the Holy Spirit – the Spirituque –
both out of apophatic respect, since he does not find in revelation
elements that could clearly show its foundation, and out of respect for
the intra-trinitarian order (how can the Son who comes logically second
be generated by the Father through the Holy Spirit who comes third?).33
From this we understand that the Son’s freedom consists in being
loved in a unique way and that this constitutes a hypostatic fullness to
which the Son says ‘yes’: ‘the freedom of the Son is expressed by saying
“yes” to the Father’.34 In this ‘yes’ the Son receptively consents to being
uniquely loved by the Father, that is, to exist as the uniquely loved one
and ‘actively’ affirms his existence as a beloved being and, even more,
affirms the otherness of the Father. From this perspective, it is clear that

30.
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 21 (PG 45, 133B).
31.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 101 (citing S. Agouridis, Ὑπόμνημα εἰς τὰς Α’ Ἰωάννου [Athens,
1973], p. 158). Zizioulas points out that this adjective with which the Father
refers to the Son (cf. John 1:14–18; 3:16) refers to the ὁ ἀγαπητός (cf. Matthew
3:17; 12:18; 2 Peter 1:17) (cf. Communion and Otherness, p. 74).
32.
Ibid., p. 73. It will be seen how the love of the Father towards the Holy Spirit
and man is to be understood.
33.
Cf. ‘One Single Source’, p. 49; ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the
Person’, p. 201. Zizioulas’ position on this point differs from that of, for
example, François-Xavier Durrwell. The latter deduces from some passages
of Scripture referring to oikonomia and transposed, without understanding
why, on the level of theologia, the statement that the Holy Spirit is the
‘hypostasized power of God’ (cf. Durrwell, Le Père: Dieu en son mystère,
p. 142). On this basis, if Durrwell formally affirms that the Father is the
origin of the Trinity, in fact ‘God is one by reason of the Holy Spirit’ (ibid.,
p. 158).
34.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 74.
Divine Personhood 243

assent is not a response to be understood in terms of choice, but of love.

As Zizioulas points out, ‘for God, the exercise of freedom does not take
the form of a choice, but it is exercised voluntarily, in the form of love’.35
Therefore reciprocity, as far as the Son is concerned, is not to be
understood in an individualistic way but in a personal way. The Son does
not decide to respond to the Father; on the contrary, he constitutes the
filial mode of existence of the Godhead, that is, he exists as a derivation
of the Father who affirms him in a unique way. This represents a
hypostatic fullness and not a compulsion for the Son. If the Son’s ‘yes’ to
the Father is assent to the Father, it is not a matter of choice but of love
and consists in existing as an affirmation of the Father as Father: ‘His
unique and unrepeatable identity as Father is constantly affirmed by the
Son.’36 From this we see that being generated, the receptive aspect of the
Son’s being, consists in the full realisation of himself as a personal-filial
being, that is, as an affirmation of the Father’s personhood.37 The freedom

35.
Ibid., p. 74. Durrwell also understands generation as an act of freedom
insofar as it is love, albeit in a way that differs in some respects from
Zizioulas: ‘the generation is an act of total freedom, because it is the act of
infinite love’ (Durrwell, Le Père: Dieu en son mystère, p. 144). This point
is not taken on board by Papanikolaou who states that for Zizioulas the Son
(as well as the Holy Spirit) has only the freedom to consent to the Father’s
initiative (cf. A. Papanikolaou, Being with God, p. 150).
36.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 101.
37.
In this sense, as Giulio Maspero points out in relation to Nyssen, the Father
is fully Father when the Son manifests to him the Spirit of his filiation;
cf. ‘Trinity’, in Mateo-Seco and Maspero (eds), The Brill Dictionary of
Gregory of Nyssa, pp. 749–60, at p. 758. Since the fi liation is understood
as the irradiation of the Father’s glory and the Son as the splendour of the
Father’s glory (cf. ibid., p. 548), this means that, in Zizioulan language, the
Father, as person, generates the Son as person, and the personal being of
the Son represents the ‘irradiation of the glory’ of the personal being of
the Father. Again, for Nyssen, the Son does not undergo the will of the
Father, but makes himself the will of the Father (cf. ibid., p. 549), which,
in Zizioulas’ thought, means that the Son, in the hypostatic fullness of the
fi lial-personal being and on this basis, makes himself the will of the Father,
that is, hypostasises this fi lial-personal being caused by the Father. Thus, it
may be considered problematic to distinguish between freedom to confirm
and freedom to constitute one’s own existence (cf. Papanikolaou, Being
with God, p. 150).
244 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

of the Son therefore consists primarily in being generated, in the sense

of being loved in a unique way, and this generation brings into being
that hypostatic fullness which is expressed as an affirmation in turn of
the otherness of the Father, that is, as an ecstatic existence for the other,
which transcends the boundaries of the self. The Father makes the other
a primary ontological category, thus elevating him to the principle of
being, insofar as he hypostasises being in a unique, personal, caused
and, precisely, filial way.

The Holy Spirit from the Father through the Son

The Holy Spirit, in Zizioulas’ intra-trinitarian reflection, remains rather
in the background. As said, this is probably due to the sobriety of the
Fathers on this point. In any case, the following can be stated.
The Holy Spirit has personal being, since he comes from the Father,
like the Son, that is, he comes from love and freedom, and not from the
necessity of an aseity or substance prior to persons. Zizioulas writes:

The Spirit … is not simply a power issuing from divine

substance; he is another personal identity standing vis-à-
vis the Father. He is a product of love and freedom and not
of substantial necessity. The Spirit, by proceeding from the
Father, and not from divine substance as such, is a person in
the true sense.38

His divinity was affirmed by the Council of Constantinople I

through the expression ‘with the Father and the Son co-adored and
co-glorified’39 – and therefore through the category, brought to attention
by Basil, of homotimia and not homoousia – thus revealing the option
for personalist language taken from the liturgical sphere, unlike the
Council of Nicaea.40 Moreover, for Zizioulas the personalist approach
is not only revealed by the assumption of the category of homotimia.
He recalls, for example, the formula ‘begotten of the substance of the
Father’ which became ‘begotten of the Father’41 and the introduction of

38.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 192.
39.
[T]ὸ σὺν Πατρὶ καὶ Υἱῷ συμπροσκυνούμενον καὶ συνδοξαζόμενον (DZ,
150).
40.
The latter, as we have seen, relied on the term homoousion, although used
more to indicate what God is not, i.e. a creature, than what God is (cf. ibid.).
41.
Γεννηθέντα … ἐκ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρὸς. ἐκ τοῦ Πατρὸς γεννηθέντα (DZ,
125.150).
Divine Personhood 245

the formula, concerning the Holy Spirit, ‘proceeds from the Father’,42
which, according to him, reveals the acquisition of the Cappadocian
notion of aitia.
Zizioulas makes a further reference to Basil when the latter states that
the Holy Spirit is third in the Trinity:

Why is it necessary, if the Spirit is third in rank (τάξει), for

him to be also third in nature? … Just as the Son is second
to the Father in rank because he derives from him … but not
second in nature, for the deity is one in each of them, so also
is the Spirit.43

Given that the Holy Spirit is a person, in that he comes from the
Father, that is from love and freedom, and that he is therefore a divine
person, not conceivable separately from the Father and the Son, what
remains is to understand the specificity of his personhood and his
freedom. It is here that Zizioulas’ reflection on the mediation of the
Son in the spiration of the Holy Spirit from the Father alone is situated.
Zizioulas cites the following passage from Nyssen:

The one, in fact, derives immediately from the first, while the
other derives through [dia] the one who derives immediately
from the first, so that the prerogative of being only-begotten
remains undoubtedly with the Son and it is not disputed
that the Spirit derives from the Father, inasmuch as the role
of mediator, proper to the Son, reserves only for him being
only-begotten and does not exclude the Spirit from a natural
relationship with the Father.44

42.
[Ἐ]κ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορευόμενον (ibid.).
43.
‘The Father as Cause’, p. 140; Basil of Caesarea, Contra Eunomium, III.1
(PG 29, 653B-656A). The original text reads: Τίς γὰρ ἀνάγκη, εἰ τῷ ἀξιώματι
καὶ τῇ τάξει τρίτον ὑπάρχει τὸ Πνεῦμα, τρίτον εἶναι αὐτὸ καὶ τῇ φύσει; … Ὡς
γὰρ ὁ Υἱὸς τάξει μὲν, δεύτερος τοῦ Πατρὸς, ὅτι ἀπ᾽ἐκείνου … φύσει δὲ οὐκέτι
δεύτερος, διότι ἡ θεότης ἐν ἑκατέρῳ μία·οὔτω δηλονότι καὶ τὸ Πνεῦμα.
44.
Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium, 21 (PG 45, 133B). Zizioulas quotes this
passage, with a translation, similar to the one above, in ‘Pneumatology and
the Importance of the Person’, pp. 193–94, and in Lectures in Christian
Dogmatics, p. 80. There are other passages in which Nyssen, in expounding
his doctrine of the procession of the Holy Spirit in relation to the Son,
does not use the preposition dia (through) but ek (from); cf. Gregory of
246 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

For Zizioulas it is understood that the Holy Spirit derives only from
the Father, but with the mediation of the Son, which however does not
eliminate the direct relationship with the Father.45 Despite the fact that
Zizioulas affirmed that the term monogenēs means that the Father loves
only the Son in a unique way, this does not mean that the Holy Spirit is
not loved and is not loved eternally. Zizioulas writes:

The Holy Spirit is also loved eternally by the Father but he

is not μονογενής. In a sense, the Spirit’s relation with the
Father … passes through the Son; it is caused by the Father
alone, yet hierarchically after the generation of the Son, in
order that ‘the mediating position of the Son in the divine life
may guard his right to be the only begotten (μονογενής)’.46

Zizioulas recalls the patristic principle that the difference between

begotten and proceeding only says that the Son is not the Holy Spirit and
vice versa,47 and that this serves to preserve the Son’s monogenēs being.48
At this point, however, it is not clear how the Holy Spirit can be free if
he is not affirmed as absolute uniqueness, just as the Son is, although the
idea of the absoluteness of the otherness of the Holy Spirit is affirmed
anyway.49 It would probably be more accurate to say that the Son is the
monogenēs, that is, the one loved in an unmediated unique mode, whereas
the Holy Spirit is the one loved in a mediated unique mode. Having
clarified this, it is nevertheless true that the trinitarian order must be

Nyssa, De Oratione Dominica (GNO 7/242, 14–43, 15). However, in the

latter case, the context is more the oikonomia than the theologia; moreover,
as Moreschini has shown, there are unclear editorial issues about the
preposition ek, which raise questions about the identity of its author;
cf. C. Moreschini, ‘Osservazioni sulla pneumatologia dei Cappadoci:
preannunci del Filioque?’, in M. Gagliardi (ed.), Il Filioque: A mille anni dal
suo inserimento nel Credo a Roma (1014–2014): Atti del Convegno di Studi,
Ateneo Pontificio ‘Regina Apostolorum’, Roma (27–28 novembre 2014) (Città
del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 2015), pp. 117–46, at pp. 140–46.
45.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, pp. 192–95; Lectures
in Christian Dogmatics, pp. 75–82.
46.
‘On Being Other’, p. 73, quoting Gregory of Nyssa, Ad Ablabium (PG 45,
133); cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 80.
47.
Cf. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 64.
48.
Cf. ibid., p. 80.
49.
‘The mediation of the Son does not change the fact that the Spirit has a
direct relationship with the Father’ (ibid.).
Divine Personhood 247

carefully considered in determining the personal identity, and therefore

the mode of existence of each of the Three, and this precisely in line with
the Fathers. Zizioulas in commenting on the document of the Pontifical
Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Greek and Latin Traditions
Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit,50 notes with approval that: ‘the
document refers to the irreversible trinitarian order according to which
the Spirit can be called “the Spirit of the Son”, while the Son can never be
called “the Son of the Spirit” (Gregory of Nyssa, Maximus, etc.)’.51
In this sense, being in an unoriginated mode, being in an
unmediated mode, and being in a mediated mode would refer to the
personal mode of being of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.
It would have been important to elaborate on the meaning of this
mediation, but Zizioulas does not enter into the matter, and justifies
this on the basis of the silence of the Fathers who ‘do not seem to say
much as to how this mediation is to be understood’,52 although they
exclude that it can admit the Son as aition or some ‘detachment of

50.
Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, Greek and Latin
Traditions Regarding the Procession of the Holy Spirit (Città del Vaticano:
Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1996).
51.
‘One Single Source’, p. 44. On this basis, Zizioulas states that he cannot
accept the Augustinian perspective, which has taken root in much Western
theology, according to which the Holy Spirit is the eternal gift of love from
the Father to the Son. This is based on biblical texts that refer to the economic
Trinity, and projecting the latter into the immanent Trinity is, for Zizioulas,
a theologically inappropriate operation, given the distinction between
oikonomia and theologia made by the Cappadocians and the importance
they attached to it in order to guarantee both God’s absolute transcendence
and the realism of his involvement in creation. However, Zizioulas recalls
that Palamas and Damascene expressed themselves about the Holy Spirit,
and at the level of the immanent Trinity, in terms similar to those of
Augustine. In particular, Zizioulas recalls how Palamas spoke of the Holy
Spirit as ‘ “some kind of love (eros – ἔρως)” of the Father towards the Son’
and Damascene of the Holy Spirit ‘as “resting” (ἀναπαυόμενον) in the Son’
(ibid., p. 45). Zizioulas, however, concludes that this should not be justified
on the basis of economic considerations. However, if this is the case, all the
more reason for Zizioulas to agree on the possibility of expressing himself
about the Holy Spirit, at the intra-trinitarian level, in Augustinian terms,
and to go beyond the Cappadocians.
52.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 193, unless we
consider Palamas’ claim to be unfounded.
248 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

divine ousia from the Father (or from the other persons of the Trinity)’.53
Zizioulas identifies three lines of interpretation in the Fathers: that of
Nyssen for whom the Son is mediator in the procession of the Holy Spirit
from the Father, that of Cyril of Alexandria tending ‘to involve the Son
in the ousianic procession of the Spirit’54 and that of Theodoret of Cyrus
who proposes ‘to limit the role of the Son in the coming into being of
the Spirit to the Economy’.55 The position of Nyssen, which is the one
that Zizioulas accepts, is closer to Cyril’s, except for the introduction
of the notion of aitia, reserved exclusively for the Father, and for the
affirmation that ‘the ousianic or “natural” relation of the Spirit to God is
one of the relationship with the Father’.56

53.
Ibid., p. 194.
54.
Ibid. Zizioulas cites, for example, Cyril of Alexandria, Thesaurus de
Sancta et Consubstantiali Trinitate (PG 75, 585A; 608AB), and relies on
H.B. Swete, On the History of the Doctrine of the Procession of the Holy
Spirit (Cambridge: Deighton, Bell & Co., 1876), pp. 148f.; J. Meyendorff,
‘La procession du Saint-Esprit chez les pères orientaux’, Russie et chrétienté
3–4 (1950), pp. 158–78.
55.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 193.
56.
Ibid., p. 194. In this regard, Zizioulas cites an obscure passage of Nyssen
(Contra Eunomium, I [PG 45, 464C]), in which reference is made to the Son
preceding the Spirit κατὰ τὸν τῆς αἰτίας λόγον. Zizioulas wonders whether
by this Nyssen means that the Son is aition of the Holy Spirit or that the
latter is third in the process of causation (κατὰ τὸν τῆς αἰτίας λόγον). In
the second case the sense of the sentence is: the Holy Spirit is after the Son
with regard to the process of causality initiated by the Father. Moreover,
Zizioulas recalls how, in Ad Ablabium, Nyssen clearly distinguishes
between the Father as aition and the Son as ek tou aitiou (cf. ‘Pneumatology
and the Importance of the Person’, p. 194). Zizioulas excludes that, on the
basis of the Cappadocians (and Constantinople I), one can attribute to the
Son the role of secondary cause, as well as distinguish, in the causative
process, between the relational-hypostatic and the ousian levels (cf. ibid.,
p. 195). Petrà shows how there is, in recent Orthodox literature, a line of
interpretation of the Filioque that goes in the opposite direction to that
which Zizioulas maintains. For example, ‘[Olivier] Clément goes well
beyond Lossky since he seems to admit that the relationship between the
Son and the Spirit is to be placed not only at the level of the eternal radiance
of the divine energies but also at the level of the divine nature itself, opening
up a wider perspective of Orthodox interpretation of the Filioque: even if the
Spirit does not derive its hypostaticity from the Son, nevertheless it seems
Divine Personhood 249

Therein lies the problem of the Filioque57 which, according to Zizioulas,

conceals the question of personalism or essentialism in theology. If one
admits that the fundamental reality of God’s personal existence is the
Father, one will have no problem in admitting that both the Son and
the Holy Spirit derive from the Father. If not, i.e. if the cause is not a
person, since it cannot be admitted that two persons are two causes –
which for the Fathers would mean two gods – nature would play the role
of cause, but this, as we have seen, is excluded. However, it is not only the
personalist theological perspective that underpins the Zizioulan, and,
more generally, the Orthodox, belief in the Filioque, but the exegesis of
Scripture itself. Zizioulas notes how the West has attributed the same
meaning to Johannine expressions concerning the Holy Spirit, although
they differ in meaning.
First of all, we find the verbs ekporeuetai – τὸ Πνεῦμα τῆς ἀληθείας
ὃ παρὰ τοῦ Πατρὸς ἐκπορεύεται58 – and pempetai – ὅταν ἔλθῃ ὁ
Παράκλητος ὃν ἐγὼ πέμψω ὐμιν παρὰ τοῦ Πατρός.59 The first means
‘proceeding from’60 and concerns the Holy Spirit in reference only to
the Father and at the intra-trinitarian level. The second means ‘sent
by’61 and refers to the Holy Spirit in relation to the Son (although it too
ultimately refers to the Father) and at the economic level. The Latins, as
Zizioulas notes, did not pay attention to this distinction, probably on
the basis of the lack of relevance in Western theology of respecting the
distinction between oikonomia and theologia.

to derive from His essence or substance’ (B. Petrà, ‘Lo Spirito santo nella
recente letteratura ortodossa’, in G. Colzani [ed.], Verso una nuova età dello
Spirito: Filosofia-Teologia-Movimenti: Atti del VI Corso di aggiornamento
dell’Associazione Teologica Italiana [2–4 gennaio 1996] [Padua: Messaggero,
1997], pp. 155–237, at pp. 212–13).
57.
A more extensive treatment of this issue can be found in S. Pavlidis (ed.),
Περί Δογματικής και δογμάτων. Μαθήματα ετών 1984–85, pp. 136–47, at:
https://elearningtheology.files.wordpress.com/2010/07/ceb9cf89ceacceb
dcebdcebfcf85-ceb6ceb7ceb6ceb9cebfcf8dcebbceb1.pdf (accessed 3 February
2019).
58.
‘[T]he Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father’ (John 15:26).
59.
‘When the Paraclete comes, whom I will send to you from the Father’
(ibid.).
60.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 78.
61.
Ibid.
250 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Another problem that Zizioulas points out concerns the identification

made by the Latins between ekporeuesthai (to proceed) which, as we
have seen, is a Johannine term, and another verb, used to indicate the
procession of the Holy Spirit, proeinai (to come from/proceed)62 or also
proienai (to send),63 which occurs in Cyril of Alexandria, Maximus the
Confessor and others. As Zizioulas observes, ‘Latin writers, including
St Augustine, do not seem to make the distinction we find in the Greek
Fathers between that and the expression exēlthon kai ēkô of Jn 8.42,
taking the verbs ekporeuesthai and proeinai as synonyms’.64
The first indicates the personal derivation of the Holy Spirit, which
occurs solely and exclusively from the Father, at the intra-trinitarian level.
The second, as we have seen in the case of Cyril, but also of the Confessor,
indicates a dependence of the Holy Spirit on the Son, not on the personal
level but, due to the common substance (ousiōdōs), on the economic level
and, for Cyril, also on the intra-trinitarian level, indicating – as Zizioulas
expresses it – a sort of Filioque at the level of ousia,65 not obtainable either
from the Cappadocians or from the Constantinopolitan Creed. Without
entering into the question of the ecclesial events linked to the Filioque –
Zizioulas reports Maximus’ interpretation that in the Latin world it
concerned the proeinai and not the ekporeuesthai.66 What is of interest
here is the question of the causality of the Father and the freedom of the
Holy Spirit, in relation to the mediation of the Son in the procession.
Zizioulas points out that the West excludes the Father and the Son as
two principles, and offers an interesting consideration that reconciles the
Eastern position with that of Augustine:

As has been so clearly shown by Y. Congar, the Western

interpretation of the Filioque, based on the theology of St
Augustine, does not necessarily reject or exclude the thesis

62.
Cf. ‘One Single Source’, p. 44.
63.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 199.
64.
Ibid. In the quoted scripture passage we read: ‘For I have come forth and
am from God’ – ἐγὼ γὰρ ἐκ τοῦ Θεοῦ ἐξῆλθον καὶ ἥκω. Zizioulas refers
to J.M. Garrigues, ‘Procession et ekporèse du Saint-Esprit’, Istina 17
(1972), pp. 345f.; Y. Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit (London: Crossroad
Publishing Co., 1997), vol. 3, pp. 87f. (originally published as Je crois en
l’Esprit-Saint, 3 vols [Paris: Cerf, 1965]).
65.
Cf. ‘One Single Source’, p. 44.
66.
Cf. ‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 200; Maximus the
Confessor, Opuscola Theologica et Polemica ad Marinum (PG 91, 136AC).
Divine Personhood 251

that the Father is the only cause of divine essence in the holy
Trinity. Augustine refers to the Father as the one from whom
the Spirit proceeds principaliter.67

It is precisely this principaliter that is read in a way that is conciliatory

with regard to the Eastern perspective:

As Congar puts it: ‘The Son … has this faculty of being the
co-principle of the Spirit entirely from the Father. Augustine
stresses this fact very forcibly, either by using his term
principaliter or in formulae which could be taken to mean a
Patre solo’ (p. 86). This is not very far from the ek tou aitiou of
the Cappadocians.68

This principaliter must therefore be correctly understood, since

Zizioulas asks whether it ‘necessarily preclude[s] making the Son a
kind of secondary cause in the ontological emergence of the Spirit’.69
If it implies that the Father is ‘the first and the original cause’,70 while
the Son is a ‘secondary’71 cause, such a term is detached from the
Cappadocian view. If, on the other hand, it is held that the Son receives
his co-principle being entirely from the Father, it does not depart from
the ek tou aitiou of the Cappadocians. This affirmation, which opens the
way to admitting the Son as co-principle – a term which, as we recall, is
Yves Congar’s, but is favourably recalled by Zizioulas – is unique in his
writings. This idea, although it is expressed only once, and moreover in

67.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 197; Zizioulas cites
Congar, I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3, pp. 80–95, and, for example,
Augustine of Hippo, Sermo 71.16.26 (PL 38, 459).
68.
‘Pneumatology and the Importance of the Person’, p. 197 n; cf. Congar,
I Believe in the Holy Spirit, vol. 3, p. 86. Zizioulas adds that, as Garrigues
points out in ‘A Roman Catholic View of the Position Now Reached in the
Question of the Filioque’, in L. Vischer (ed.), Spirit of God, Spirit of Christ
(Geneva: WCC, 1981), pp. 149–63, at p. 161, ‘the distinction between the
formula ex Patre Filioque and a Patre Filioque, the latter not contradicting
the ex unico Patre’ is interesting. Finally, Zizioulas points out how Louis
Bouyer in his Le Consolateur: Esprit-Saint et vie de grâce (Paris: Cerf, 1980),
p. 221, does not seem to attribute ‘so much significance’ to the principaliter.
69.
‘One Single Source’, p. 42.
70.
Ibid.
71.
Ibid.
252 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

a footnote, does not contradict the vision of the Father as the only cause,
since co-principiality, as far as the Son is concerned, is understood as
received from the Father and exercised as mediation in the procession
of the Holy Spirit. Furthermore, this co-principiality would show more
deeply how the Son, in his specific case, in deriving solely and fully
from the Father, becomes person, in the sense of ontological principle of
being that mediates the causation of otherness. In such a case mediation
would indicate an aspect of personal-filial being.72 In the same way, the
derivation from the cause, through the one who comes immediately
from it, would indicate the particular mode of personal existence of the
Holy Spirit.
However, what can be said about Zizioulas’ conception of freedom in
reference to the Holy Spirit is generally speaking that he is free insofar
as he is a person, that is, a unique alterity, caused, that is, affirmed by
an Other who exists as an affirmation of Otherness. Given that the Holy
Spirit is a particular being affirmed by an Other, and that therefore his
ontological principle is a being that exists beyond the boundaries of the
self, it is part of his ontological constitution that freedom to exist, in
turn, beyond the boundaries of the self, affirming – as we have also seen
in reference to the Son – the Father as a unique otherness. Moreover,
his personal being is distinguished from that of the Father, who is
ungenerated, and from that of the Son – who is generated and is the
mediator of the procession – by the fact that it proceeds from the cause
by means of what comes immediately from it.73

72.
The mediator being, as a qualifying trait of the ‘person’, is found by Zizioulas,
on the economic and creaturely level, also in reference to Christ and man.
Although Zizioulas does not explain how to understand exactly, in relation
to the personal being, this proceeding of the Holy Spirit mediated by the
cause, without precluding its deriving solely from the cause, it is noted
that Knežević states that Zizioulas does not clarify how the Son is Son
in relation to the Holy Spirit (cf. ‘Homo Theurgos’, p. 108). It would be an
interesting avenue of reflection, based on the teaching of Nyssen and from
the personalist perspective of Zizioulas, to explore the relationship between
being a person and, on the one hand, the role of mediator, in the case of the
personal-fi lial being of the Son, and, on the other, the mediating from what
is immediately derived from the cause, which is such that it does not prevent
the deriving solely from the cause, in the case of the Holy Spirit.
73.
Nevertheless, there are those who have argued that for Zizioulas the Son
and the Holy Spirit have a qualitatively different freedom (cf. ‘Trinitarian
Freedom’, pp. 199–200; Papanikolaou, Being with God, pp. 150f.). The
Divine Personhood 253

The Son and the Holy Spirit oriented to the Father

A final aspect concerning the understanding of the notion of freedom,
in reference to the divine person caused, is related to Zizioulas’ recovery
of the patristic teaching on the Father not only as the origin, but also as
the fulfilment of the trinitarian being, an aspect not much developed by
Zizioulas, probably because of the sobriety of the Fathers in this regard.
Zizioulas is aware of Nazianzen’s statement: ‘The union is the Father,
from whom what follows comes and to whom it leads’,74 and echoes
these words, observing that ‘every movement in God, ad extra as well
as ad intra, begins with the Father and ends with him’,75 since ‘in the
Trinity, the very being of God is a movement from the Father to the Son
and to the Spirit, which is returned finally to the person of the Father’.76
He explains:

How can three persons not be three separate Gods? The

answer is that the Son and the Spirit come from the Father
and orient themselves entirely to him. He is the source of their
being and thus of the existence of the Trinity. The sovereignty
of the Father secures the unity and oneness of God.77

As we can see, the unity and oneness of God are connected to the
Father, who is the source of the being of the Son and the Holy Spirit,
towards whom they are directed. Once again, we encounter that evocative
image of the ‘active’ response of the second and third persons of the

notion of cause is not opposed to personhood and freedom, contrary to what,

for different reasons, Sergei Bulgakov and Pavel Evdokimov also believe (cf.
Petrà, ‘Lo Spirito santo nella recente letteratura ortodossa’, pp. 155–237).
According to Bulgakov, the centrality of the notion of cause leads to the
splitting of the Trinity into two dyads (Father-Son and Father-Holy Spirit,
in the Eastern tradition) and undermines the freedom of persons who,
instead, are self-determining. Evdokimov, as Zizioulas observes, refuses
to accept the notion of aitia because it implies the idea of an impersonal
derivation, precisely what the Cappadocians exclude (cf. ‘Pneumatology and
the Importance of the Person’, p. 192).
74.
Ἕνωσις δὲ ὁ Πατήρ, ἐξ οὖ καὶ πρὸς ὃν ἀνάγεται τὰ ἑξῆς (Gregory of
Nazianzus, Oratio 42.15 [PG 36, 476B]; my italics; cf. ‘The Father as Cause’,
pp. 137–38).
75.
Ibid., p. 138.
76.
Ibid., pp. 147–48.
77.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 79; my italics.
254 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Trinity which, as we have seen, is not to be understood in individualistic

terms, since none of the Three exists independently of the others and
prior to or consequent upon them. The response of the Son and the Holy
Spirit cannot be understood as a moment subsequent to generation and
inspiration, but simultaneous with them, and therefore as the expression
of the generated and proceeding modes of being, respectively. So for
Zizioulas generation and procession consist in a relationship that is
by definition reciprocal: ‘When the Father says to the Son “You are
my Son”, and the Son replies “You are my Father”, a relationship is
established and affirmed which involves the affirmation of otherness’.78
From this it follows that the response, for example, of the Son indicates
the way of being son of the Son, that is to say of affirming as Son the
otherness which is primarily that of the Father. The response of the Son
and the Holy Spirit to the Father coincides with their very being which,
as we have said, is love and freedom, that is, ecstatic existence, beyond
the boundaries of the self, as an affirmation of otherness. In short, for
Zizioulas, ‘if God the Father is immortal, it is because his identity as
Father, unique and unrepeatable, is constantly affirmed by the Son and
the Spirit who call him “Father” ’.79
This consideration enables Zizioulas’ thought to be explored further
from an ontological point of view. He recalls the general theological
principle according to which ‘the ultimate goal in our existence is – to
put it in terms borrowed from patristic theology – the “other” not as
ἄλλο but as ἄλλος, that is not as nature but as person’.80 From this we
understand that the return to the other means to have the other as the
purpose (σκοπὸς)81/rest (στάσις)82 of one’s existence, that is, to affirm
the other. This point is of capital importance because: ‘Only if the
ultimate goal of a particular being is the Other, and only if this Other is
a person that can hypostasize the particular and elevate it to the status
of ontological ultimacy, can this particular being survive as particular,
and not be swallowed up by the general.’83
Existence that has the other as its goal is an ecstatic existence, which
consists in the affirmation of the other and which therefore has as its

78.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 199.
79.
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον», in Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς
Ἀρρήτου, p. 101.
80.
‘On Being Other’, p. 68; Zizioulas mentions Gregory of Nazianzus, Ep.
101 (PG 37, 180AB); Maximus the Confessor, Ep. 15 (PG 91, 552B).
81.
Cf. ‘On Being Other’, p. 64.
82.
Cf. ibid., p. 53.
83.
Ibid., p. 68.
Divine Personhood 255

definitive goal neither the other as nature nor the self, but the other as the
primary ontological cause of personal being.84 Affirming the other – the
Son affirms the Father – therefore consists in bringing back to the other –
the Son says ‘yes’ to the Father. In the affirmation of the other, the cause thus
‘consecrates’ the elevation of the particularity, both of the cause and of the
caused, to the state of ontological definitiveness. In Zizioulas’ trinitarian
relational ontology, the deriving from another, that is, being affirmed as
otherness by another, and the bringing back to this other, that is, affirming
one’s own cause as otherness, together express personal being, thus forming
a unity, just as, with regard to the cause, causing otherness and being
affirmed as otherness by the caused form a unity. The person is both the
one who causes and the one who is caused, and the personhood of the one
who causes cannot be thought of apart from the personhood of the one
who is caused and vice versa.85
In the light of what has emerged, it is difficult to fully agree with
Colin E. Gunton, when he observes that Zizioulas does not recognise an
adequate role for the Son and the Holy Spirit in the constitution of the
divinity, as he claims it is for Basil, for whom the Holy Spirit completes
(συμπληρωτικόν) the Trinity.86 That the Holy Spirit, as the third person,
completes the Trinity is part of the Basilian teaching, fully accepted by
Zizioulas, on the divinity of the third person, without whom the Trinity is
not complete. According to Zizioulas, it is also in the mediation of the Son
in the procession of the Holy Spirit from the Father that the personhood
of the Son is expressed, and it is in the affirmation that the Holy Spirit
and the Son make in relation to the otherness of the Father that the full
personhood of each of the Three is expressed.

84.
Cf. ibid.
85.
‘Establishing the Father as the arche or aitia of the other persons is not to
suggest that this describes what it means to be a person but what it means
to speak of this particular person. To say that the Father is the first person
of the Trinity is not to imply that he alone defines the term person, nor that
he alone establishes the ontological primacy of the person. The Father is
never a person as a thing in itself, but only in relation to the Son and the
Spirit who are fully and truly persons as well’ (P.M.B. Robinson, ‘Towards
a Definition of Person and Relations, with Particular Reference to the
Relational Ontology of John Zizioulas’, doctoral dissertation, London, 1999,
p. 66).
86.
Cf. C.E. Gunton, ‘Persons and Particularity’, in D.H. Knight (ed.), The
Theology of John Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church (Aldershot: Ashgate,
2007), pp. 97–107, at p. 103. Gunton cites Basil of Caesarea, Homily on the
Hexaemeron II.6 (PG 29, 44A); Ep. 243 (PG 32, 909A).
256 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

A Single Qualitative Freedom

We have seen that the freedom of the Son and the Holy Spirit is the freedom
of the Father, both because the freedom of the Father is the ontological
principle of the freedom of the Son and the Holy Spirit and because the
freedom of the latter does not differ qualitatively from that of the Father.
Freedom is being oneself, being other, being for the other, being from
the other. In this, for Zizioulas, lies the overcoming of the ‘“totalizing”
substantialism’ and of the ‘“liberating” fragmentation’ of existence and,
in short, the meaning of personal being. The difference between the
Three, as far as ontological freedom is concerned, lies in the way in which
being is hypostasised. The Father’s freedom is the freedom to generate
and to proceed, in the sense of existing as an affirmation of ontological
otherness, such that this is elevated to a constitutive of being. Therefore,
the freedom of the Father is the ontological foundation of the freedom
of God – ‘the freedom of God is the freedom of the Father’87 – because of
the Father’s hypostatic property of undivided paternity. The freedom of
the Son consists in being generated by the Father, that is, in being loved
in a unique way, and is manifested as the acceptance of his ontological
constitution of monogenēs, which is also an affirmation of the otherness of
the Father as the ontological cause of his being, and an affirmation of the
otherness of the Holy Spirit, as the mediator of the latter’s procession. In
the affirmation of the otherness of the Father and the Holy Spirit consists
the constitutiveness of the Son’s being in relation to them. The freedom
of the Holy Spirit consists in proceeding personally from the Father,
through the personal being of the Son, and in affirming the otherness
of the Father as the ontological cause of his being. In this consists the
constitutive nature of the Holy Spirit’s being in relation to the being of
the Father and the Son. Ontological freedom is therefore distinguished as
coming from the Other, as freedom caused (in the case of the Son and the
Holy Spirit with respect to the Father), as constituted freedom (in the case
of the Son with respect to the Holy Spirit, of the Holy Spirit with respect
to the Son, and of the Father with respect to the Son and the Holy Spirit)
and as reconduction/bringing back to the Other (in the case of the Son and
the Holy Spirit with respect to the Father).

87.
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, p. 61.
 Concluding Remarks

Zizioulas’ Bold Exercise in

Theological Reflection

At the conclusion of this study on the trinitarian personalist ontology

of Ioannis Zizioulas, I offer some critical remarks which I summarise
as follows.

The Question of the Person and Freedom

As we have seen, the notion of person is learnt as it pertains to the intra-
trinitarian sphere. For this reason and because it expresses a unique
particularity, it is also subject to a certain apophaticism which, as has
been observed, excludes the possibility of being understood in humanly
configurable terms. In particular, we have seen how the notion of person
indicates a particular being that expresses both hypostaticity and ecstaticity,
whose existence is free from ontological necessity (i.e. hypostasises nature
not according to laws of necessity) and is inscribed in a process of causal
derivation, thanks to which the causing being elevates the caused being to
the constitutive of being. In this sense, Zizioulas does not oppose the person
to nature, except at the level of creation. He examines the relationship
between person and nature, concluding that the person is the ontological
foundation of nature, i.e. that the particular constitutes the principle and
mode of existence of the general. It follows that in the Trinity the Three
share the same nature insofar as they are related. This is not a conflictual
relationship between nature and person, but an asymmetrical one. If the
person is not without nature, because it represents its ontological principle
and mode of existence, for this very reason, the person is more than
258 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

nature: this is where the reference – recently made by Zizioulas, not literal
but clarifying – to Lossky on the irreducibility of the person to nature, or
rather, to the equality of nature, lies. However, if a greater essentialism
is evident in the Fathers (as in Jean-Claude Larchet, Chrysostom
Koutloumousianos and Nikolaos Loudovikos), it will be necessary then,
in evaluating Zizioulas’ proposal, to ask whether it leads to divergence
from dogma. There is no tritheism involved because the Three are One
for the Father, there is no subordinationism involved because the Three
are consubstantial for the Father (the subordinationism affirmed by
Zizioulas only concerns the mode of being and not the essence), there
is no modalism involved because the Father causes absolute ontological
otherness. Lastly, as we shall repeat below, the being of the Trinity is both
non-necessary and non-contingent. On the basis of what has been said, it
follows that freedom can be caused by the other, as in the case of the Son
and the Holy Spirit, insofar as they have as the ontological principle of
their being an ecstatic person who exists as love/freedom, or constituted in
relation to the other, as in the case of the Father who constitutes himself as
personhood/freedom, insofar as he affirms the Son and the Holy Spirit
as personhood/freedom, and is affirmed as personhood/freedom by the
personhood/freedom of the latter.

The Question of the Non-necessity and

Non-contingency of Divine Freedom in a
Mystical-Apophatic Perspective
In Zizioulas’ perspective, the being of the Trinity is both non-necessary,
since its ontological principle is the person, as ‘free and loving origin’,
which is in the non-necessity of a prior or anhypostatic nature, and non-
contingent, since the freedom of the Father does not consist in a freedom
of choice, but in a mode of being that is ‘beyond the concept of choice’,
that is, in the non-necessity of choice, since anything given is postulated
in God, by virtue of the principial ecstatic-agapic personhood of the
Father. In this regard, Zizioulas states that contingency is not the
logical alternative to necessity and vice versa. He thus identifies a ‘third
option’, which is precisely the personhood of the Father, as an eternal
transcendence of the necessity and contingency of divine being. The
Father is ontologically free and is the principle of ontological freedom,
insofar as he is neither necessitated nor chooses: in fact, he does not
have to contend with any datum, either of a non-personified nature or of
the other divine persons. The Father, as the free principle of divine being,
makes the latter free, and therefore the being of the Son and the being of
the Holy Spirit are ontologically free.
Zizioulas’ Bold Exercise in Theological Reflection 259

Although it certainly remains the case that the human mind cannot
logically comprehend it, it should nevertheless be noted that this is not a
theological postulate, but a notion that emerges from the teaching of teh
Fathers, or at least from dogma. This problem had already been recognised
by the Fathers. Nazianzen had pointed out the aporia (ἀπορία) constituted
by the possibility and the impossibility of speaking of the will to generate,
introducing the notion of the willing (in Zizioulan terms, the personhood),
and focusing on this more than on the ‘concurrence’ of the will with nature,
as instead – so it seems – for Cyril of Alexandria. Moreover, attributing
the causality of the divine being to the Three and/or to nature does not
resolve this aporia. Zizioulas, for his part, refers to the apophatic approach
of Pseudo-Dionysius Areopagite and, even more, of the Confessor, and
affirms a freedom that is ‘beyond’ (hyper) choice and necessity and that
opens up to a mystical-ecclesial understanding. This ‘beyond’, which pushes
reflection beyond the ‘limits of ontology’, is not logically thinkable by the
human mind and declares its cognitive limits, beyond which there is that
‘ignorance of God’ of which Yannaras has given an account.
If Zizioulas rejects Lossky’s apophatic approach, according to which the
Trinity surpasses any notion of nature and person, he takes on the apophatic
approach of the Fathers, which takes seriously the aporetic character of
theological thought, because of the tension between the already and the not
yet of the eschatological transformation of man’s being and thinking.

On the Non-deep Development of the Trinitarian

Nature of the Notion of Person and the Question of
Ontological Freedom
This seems to respond to a deliberate delimitation of the field of investi-
gation, in fidelity to the apophaticism of the Fathers. If in this way due
prominence is given to taxis, perichōrēsis remains rather in the background
(Zizioulas in fact resolves the understanding of the trinitarian being
through the categories of one and many, without reaching the probably
more personalist category of we). This is perhaps due to the conviction
that it indicates the way in which persons relate to each other and not the
way in which they come into being. Such a conviction is difficult to grasp
fully, not least because of the very distinction that justifies it. Furthermore,
it must be pointed out that Zizioulas treated the question of the Father-
Holy Spirit relationship with particular attention to the mediation of the
Son. Interesting in this regard is the opening – unfortunately not pursued
in depth – to an interpretation of Yves Congar regarding the Augustinian
principaliter, according to which the Son, at the intra-trinitarian level, is
co-principle with the Father of the procession of the Holy Spirit, since
260 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

he derives this faculty solely and totally from the Father. In any case, on
the basis of the consideration of the relationships Father-Son and Father-
Son (as mediator)-Holy Spirit, and on the ‘reconduction’/‘bringing back’
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit to the Father, the notions of person and
of freedom become more precise with respect to their general meaning of
‘existence for the other, as other’.

On the Affirmation of an ‘Active’, Non-causal Role of

Nature in the Trinitarian Existence
According to what has been said, it is only as a person that nature can be
known: the person reveals nature and as a personal being. This personal
being, as existence for the other, is full paternity in the Father, full sonship
in the Son, full procession in the Holy Spirit. Nature coincides with these
three modes of existence, and is not without them, just as each mode
is not without the other two. In this sense, it is difficult to say that in
Zizioulas the notion of nature is absent or even negatively connoted in
the trinitarian context. In this case, on the one hand, he does not give
it a causal role, in deference to the Fathers who did not give it the term
aitia within trinitarian reflection, and, on the other hand, he gives it an
‘active’ role. The recent affirmation of Zizioulas, in ‘Person and Nature’,
which follows that of the Confessor, according to which nature brings
persons into communion, finds its full meaning in the framework of the
affirmation of nature endowed with movement and freedom insofar as
it is hypostasised by the person, and this, in the final instance, for the
Father who, by his hypostatic property of ungenerated Generator, not
caused by nature or communion, is aitia of the co-emergence of the
trinitarian existence with the divine nature. Therefore, the fact that the
personal derivation only pertains to the hypostatic level does not exclude
that nature is involved in it – quite the contrary – since the person is the
principle and mode of existence of nature. The person of the Father causes
from himself, and not from his nature, the mode of existence of his nature
and the mode of existence of the person caused, that is, the person caused,
so that nature, by its relational mode of existence, whose ontological
principle is the person, brings persons into communion.

Caution and Boldness of Zizioulas’ Reflection

Zizioulas’ proposal tries to respect the data of the New Testament and
the lex orandi, avoiding classifying them as archaic, and tries to keep
within the boundaries of patristic reflection by limiting the study of
Zizioulas’ Bold Exercise in Theological Reflection 261

the causality of the Father to the relationship with the Son and to the
latter’s mediation in the procession of the Holy Spirit: in this sense
his reflection is cautious. By resorting to existentialist categories,
which he noted in the Fathers – or rather, as Aristotle Papanikolaou
has observed, which are present in an implicit form in the Fathers1 –
he has undoubtedly defi ned a translation and a development of them:
in this sense his reflection is bold. He rejects the more balanced and
apparently less problematic solution of affi rming two ontological
principles (the Father and nature/Three and nature) and maintains
one: the Father, the personal being who is such insofar as he causes
otherness, constitutes himself from the caused and is constituted by
the caused. He who causes is a ‘principial’ being, that is, one who
eternally transcends choice and necessity, including the other as
constitutive of his identity, and it is precisely in this that personhood
(which is the cause of personhood) consists. For Zizioulas, this cannot
be thought of from ‘our experience of fragmented time’, that is, from
the individual.2 To think personal reality requires, as much as possible,
a personal understanding, i.e. of love and freedom, which transcends
the limits of that logical consequentiality which is linked to space-
time fragmentation.

A Favourable Moment for Studies on Zizioulas

Years ago, Ioannis Spiteris stated that Zizioulas’ theology ‘should be studied
and developed because it can be extremely fruitful in the field of Catholic
research as well’.3 I believe that the time is ripe for a deeper reading of
Zizioulas’ trinitarian thought. This possibility is given, first of all, by the fact
that all his texts are now available, if we consider that his later writings –
such as ‘Trinitarian Freedom’ and ‘Person and Nature’ – are presented as
the conclusion of his work. In addition to this, there is now a large body of
literature on his theology and on the patristic and philosophical questions
he posed. Moreover, I believe that the study of Zizioulas’ theology, which
must be exegetical, hermeneutical and systematic, can now dampen the
sometimes perhaps too passionately polemical spirit that risks remaining
fruitless for theology. In this regard, Zizioulas expresses his conviction
that Orthodox theology is currently living a moment characterised by

1.
‘From Sophia to Personhood’, p. 19.
2.
‘Trinitarian Freedom’, p. 202.
3.
Spiteris, La teologia ortodossa neo-greca, p. 416.
262 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

an ‘absence of positive proposals’,4 which, moreover, reserves a ‘harsh

criticism’5 towards those of the past decades ‘parroting’6 what the Fathers
said, without wondering what ‘they would say today’.7 In this sense, it is
time to overcome the gloomy picture he paints:

We live in a time of theological infighting. The word ‘heretic’

tends to mean anyone who dissents from our opinion, in
spite of what Saint Photius and the ancient tradition of the
Church teach us, which clearly limited the term ‘heresy’ only
to that which constitutes a deviation from the decisions of
Ecumenical Councils.8

The Question of ‘Experience’ and the Relevance of the

Person of the Father for the Spiritual Life of the Church
In approaching and evaluating the Zizioulas’ proposal, it is necessary to
reflect deeply on the value of experience – in its connection to ontology
more than to psychology – both for theology and for hermeneutics. This is a
complex and delicate issue, even insidious, but unavoidable. The scepticism
of some scholars towards a personalist, patro-centric, monarchical
vision of the Trinity is due to the conviction that paternity necessarily
implies a dictated otherness. This conviction, as Koutloumousianos
has confessed,9 is rooted in the experience of human paternities that

4.
«[A]πουσία θετικῶν προτάσεων» («Ἡ ὀρθόδοξη θεολογία καὶ οἱ προκλήσεις
τοῦ 21ου αἰωνα», in P. Kalaitzidis and N. Asproulis [eds], Πρόσωπο,
Εὐχαριστία καὶ Βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ σὲ ὀρθόδοξη καὶ οἰκουμενικὴ προοπτικὴ:
Σύναξις Εὐχαριστίας πρὸς τιμὴν τοῦ Μητροπολίτη Περγάμου Ἰωάννη Δ.
Ζηζιούλα [Volos, 2016], pp. 327–37, here p. 329).
5.
«σκληρὴ κριτική» (ibid., p. 330).
6.
«παπαγαλίζει» (ibid., p. 333).
7.
«[T]ί θὰ ἔλεγαν σήμερα» (ibid., p. 332).
8.
«Ζοῦμε σὲ μία ἐποχὴ θεολογικοῦ ἀλληλοσπαραγμοῦ. Ἡ λέξη «αἱρετικὸς»
τείνει νὰ δηλώσει κάθε ἕναν ποὺ διαφωνεῖ μὲ τὴν ἄποψή μας, σὲ πεῖσμα
ὅσων ὁ ἱερὸς Φώτιος καὶ ἡ ἀρχαία παράδοση τῆς Ἐκκλησίας μᾶς διδάσκουν,
περιορίζοντας τὸν ὅρο «αἵρεση» μόνο σὲ ὅ,τι ἁποτελεῖ παράβαση τῶν
ἀποφάσεων Οἰκουμενικῶν Συνόδων» (ibid., p. 330).
9.
C. Koutloumousianos, ‘Interview’, at: https://www.johnsanidopoulos.
com/2015/12/chrysostom-koutloumousianos-on-his-new.html (accessed 27
April 2020).
Zizioulas’ Bold Exercise in Theological Reflection 263

generate individualisms. Therefore, he argues that man must focus on

the rediscovery of his own nature, which indicates equality, and not on
the person, which refers to a hierarchical order liable to individualism,
since it is by virtue of the acknowledgement of the common nature that
human relations can be realised. Although I am convinced that, for
Koutloumousianos, nature is to be understood within a dynamic of grace,
I ask the following questions. Is it so certain that the overcoming of such
a ‘perversion of personal being’ – in Zizioulan terms – can take place
by virtue of a re-centring of human beings on their logos physeōs that
disregards the consideration that grace is caused by another (the Father),
is hypostasised by another (the Son) and is communicated by another (the
Holy Spirit)? Is it not possible to think that the reacquisition of humanity’s
personal being, rather than coming from obedience to the logos of their
own nature, albeit according to a dynamic of grace, but prescinding from
otherness as a primary ontological category, comes from the ‘reawakening’
of this logos that an Other freely causes? And is it not possible to think that
the experience of authentic spiritual paternity, which generates freedom
as love, is a reflection of divine paternity?10 It is then towards a personalist
theology set – or received – in an individualistic way that we must react,
always bearing in mind, however, the effects of a theology centred on the
primacy of nature, that is, the annihilation of the particular in the abstract
and universal laws of the general, and therefore moralism.
While it is true that offering a definitive word on the monarchy of
the Father is an arduous undertaking, the results of the research have
led me to believe that the proposal of Ioannis Zizioulas, recently called
a ‘contemporary Church Father’,11 constitutes a reading in conformity
with dogma and possessing its own internal coherence. It is linked
to a precise apophatic approach, which highlights the significance
of aporia through detailed argument, and the related identification
of the ‘third option’ – not as a theological postulate but as a notion

10.
I refer here to the reflections of Pope Francis in his Apostolic Letter,
Patris Corde, on the 150th Anniversary of the Proclamation of St Joseph
as Patron of the Universal Church, 8 December 2020, at: https://www.
vatican.va/content/francesco/en/apost_letters/documents/papa-francesco-
lettera-ap_20201208_patris-corde.html (accessed 14 February 2022).
11.
[Σ]ύγχρονος Πατέρας τῆς Ἐκκλησίας (N. Asproulis, «Ἡ νεο-πατερικὴ
μεθοδολογία τοῦ Μητροπολίτη Περγάμου: ἀπο τὸν π. Γεώργιο Φλωρόφσκυ
στὴν θεολογικὴ γενιὰ τοῦ ‘60’», in Kalaitzidis and Asproulis [eds],
Πρόσωπο, Εὐχαριστία καὶ Βασιλεία τοῦ Θεοῦ σὲ ὀρθόδοξη καὶ οἰκουμενικὴ
προοπτικὴ, pp. 33–58, at p. 58).
264 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

emerging from reflection – as proof of the approach of thought to

its object, which always remains ‘beyond’ (hyper) it. This ‘beyond’
undoubtedly reveals the limit of knowledge and calls for a theological
exercise in constant conversion to personal thinking, which goes
beyond a fragmented-individualist understanding and enters into a
properly mystical-ecclesial understanding. It is in this way that one can
open up the possibility of grasping the profoundly erotic character of
ontology: the freedom of God, and of man, is the freedom of the Father.
 Bibliography

Books by Zizioulas (in Chronological Order)

Ἡ ἑνότης τῆς Ἐκκλησίας ἐν τῇ εὐχαριστίᾳ καί τῷ ἐπισκόπῳ κατὰ τοὺς τρεῖς
πρώτους αἰῶνας (Athens, 1965)
French translation: L’eucharistie, l’évêque et l’église durant les trois
premiers siècles (Paris: Desclée de Brouwer, 1994)
English translation: Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church
in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries,
trans. by E. Theokritoff (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross, 2001)
L’être ecclésial (Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981)
English translation: Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the
Church, Foreword by J. Meyendorff (Crestwood, NY: St Vladimir’s
Seminary Press, 1985); 4th edn (2002) the text adds, as Chapter III,
‘Christ, the Spirit and the Church’, pp. 123–42 (see below) and replaces
Chapter V of L’être ecclésial, ‘Ordination et communion’, 171–79 –
which previously appeared in Istina 16, no. 1 (1971), pp. 5–12 – with
‘Ministry and Communion’, pp. 209–46, Chapter VI
Italian translation: L’essere ecclesiale, trans. from the French by D. Varasi
(Magnano: Qiqajon, 2007)
Ἡ Κτίση ὡς Εὐχαριστία: Θεολογικὴ προσέγγιση στὸ πρόβλημα τῆς οἰκολογίας
(Athens, 1992)
Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church,
ed. by P. McPartlan, Foreword by R. Williams (London: T. & T. Clark,
2006)
Italian translation: Comunione e alterità, Preface by W. Kasper, trans. by
M. Campatelli and G. Cesareo (Rome: Lipa, 2016)
Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. by D.H. Knight (London and New York:
T. & T. Clark, 2008)
The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church, and the World
Today, ed. by F.G. Edwards (Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2010)
Περί Δογματικής και δογμάτων. Μαθήματα ετών 1984–85, notes of lectures
at the Department of Pastoral Studies of the Theological School of the
266 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki during the academic year 1984–85,

for the exclusive use of the students and published with the permission
and of the same by the Publications Office of the above University, ed. by
S. Pavlidis, at: https://elearningtheology.files.wordpress.com/2010/07
/ceb9cf89ceaccebdcebdcebfcf85-ceb6ceb7ceb6ceb9cebfcf8dcebbceb1.pdf
(accessed 3 February 2019)
The Eucharistic Communion and the World, ed. by L.B. Tallon (London and
New York: Bloomsbury, 2011)

Primary Bibliography of Articles and Other Contributions

by Zizioulas (in Chronological Order)
‘Human Capacity and Human Incapacity: A Theological Exploration of
Personhood’, Scottish Journal of Theology 28, no. 5 (1975), pp. 401–48;
republished in Communion and Otherness, pp. 206–49
Italian translation: ‘Capacità e incapacità umane: un’esplorazione
teologica della persona’, in Comunione e alterità, trans. by
M. Campatelli and G. Cesareo (2016)
«Ἀπὸ τὸ προσωπεῖον εἰς τὸ πρόσωπον: Ἡ συμβολὴ τῆς πατερικῆς θεολογίας
εἰς τὴν ἐνοιαν τοῦ προσώπου», in Χαριστήρια εἰς τιμὴν τοῦ Μητροπολίτου
Χαλκιδόνος Μελίτωνος (Thessaloniki 1977), pp. 287–323; republished in
Ἡ ἰδιοπροσωπία τοῦ ἑλληνισμοῦ, Β´ (Athens, 1983), pp. 300ff.; and again
in L. Siasos (ed.), Ἱμάτια Φωτὸς Ἀρρήτου: Διεπιστημονική τοῦ προσώπου
(Thessaloniki, 2002), pp. 73–123
French Translation: ‘Du personnage à la personne: La notion de la
personne et l’hypostase ecclésiale’, in L’être ecclésial, trans. by A. Tatsis
(Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), pp. 23–55
English translation: ‘Personhood and Being’, in Being as Communion,
trans. from Greek by N. Russell (1985), pp. 27–65
Italian translation: ‘Dalla maschera alla persona: la nozione di “persona”
e l’ipostasi ecclesiale’, in L’essere ecclesiale, trans. from French by
D. Varasi (2007), pp. 23–69
‘Vérité et communion dans la prospective de la pensée patristique grecque’,
Irénikon 50 (1977), pp. 451–510; republished, revised by the author,
as ‘Vérité et communion: Fondements patristiques et implications
existentielles de l’ecclésiologie eucharistique’, in L’être ecclésial (1981),
pp. 57–110
English translation: ‘Truth and Communion’, in Being as Communion,
trans. from French by P.J. Bussey (1985), pp. 67–122
«Χριστολογία καὶ Ὕπαρξη: Ἡ διαλεκτικὴ κτιστοῦ-ἀκτίστου καὶ τὸ δόγμα τῆς
Χαλκηδόνος», Synaxē 2 (1982), pp. 9–20 (reports, unlike the translations
below, a short introductory part under the title «Ι. Εἰσαγωγικά», on pages 9
and 10)
‘Christologie et existence: la dialectique créé-incréé et le dogme de
Chalcédoine’, trans. by M. Stavrou, Contacts 36 (1984), pp. 154–72
Bibliography 267

‘ “Created” and “Uncreated”: The Existential Significance of Chalcedonian

Christology’, in Communion and Otherness, trans. from French by
P. McPartlan (2006), pp. 250–63
«Χριστολογία καὶ Ὕπαρξη: Συνέχεια τῆς συζητήσεως ἀπὸ τὸν καθηγητὴ Ἰω.
Ζηζιούλα», Synaxē 6 (1983), pp. 77–85
‘Appendix: A Dialogue with Philip Sherrard’, in Communion and
Otherness, trans. by N. Russell (2006), pp. 270–85
‘The Teaching of the 2nd Ecumenical Council on the Holy Spirit in the
Historical and Ecumenical Perspective’, in S.J. Martins (ed.), Credo
in Spiritum Sanctum: Atti del Congresso Teologico Internazionale di
Pneumatologia (Città del Vaticano: Libreria Editrice Vaticana, 1983),
vol. 1, pp. 29–54; then published as ‘Pneumatology and the Importance
of the Person: A Commentary on the Second Ecumenical Council’, in
Communion and Otherness (2006), pp. 178–205
‘On Being a Person: Towards an Ontology of Personhood’, in C. Schwöbel
and C. E. Gunton (eds), Persons, Divine and Human (Edinburgh: T. & T.
Clark, 1991), pp. 33–46; republished in Communion and Otherness (2006),
pp. 99–112
‘The Doctrine of God the Trinity Today: Suggestions for an Ecumenical
Study’, paper presented to the British Council of Churches, 1991, and
published in A.I.C. Heron (ed.), The Forgotten Trinity: 3: A Selection of
Papers Presented to the BCC Study Commission on the Trinitarian Doctrine
Today (London: Church House Publishing, 1991), pp. 19–32; republished in
The One and the Many (2010), pp. 3–16
«Τὸ εἶναι τοῦ Θεοῦ καὶ τὸ εἶναι τοῦ ἀνθρώπου: Ἀπόπειρα θεολογικοῦ
διαλόγου», Synaxē 37 (1991), pp. 11–36
‘The Being of God and the Being of Man: An Essay in Theological
Dialogue’, trans. by E. Theokritoff, in J. Hadjinicolaou (ed.),
Synaxis: An Anthology of the Most Significant Orthodox Theology in
Greece Appearing in the Journal Synaxi from 1982 to 2002 (Montreal:
Alexander Press, 2006), vol. 1, pp. 99–120; republished in The One and
the Many (2010), pp. 17–40
‘Communion et altérité’, Service Orthodoxe de Presse 184 (1994), pp. 23–33
‘Communion and Otherness’, St Vladimir’s Theological Quarterly
38, no. 4 (1994), pp. 347–61; Sobornost 16, no. 1 (1994), pp. 7–19;
republished, with additions, as ‘Introduction: Communion and
Otherness’, in Communion and Otherness (2006), pp. 1–12
‘The Doctrine of the Holy Trinity: The Significance of the Cappadocian
Contribution’, in C. Schwöbel (ed.), Trinitarian Theology Today: Essays
in Divine Being and Act (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1995), pp. 44–60;
republished as ‘The Trinity and Personhood: Appreciating Cappadocian
Contribution’, in Communion and Otherness (2006), pp. 155–70
‘Uniformity, Diversity, and the Unity of the Church’, Internationale Kirchliche
Zeitschrift 91, no. 1 (2001), pp. 44–59; republished in The One and the Many
(2010), pp. 333–48
268 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

‘Appendix: Person and Individual – a “Misreading” of the Cappadocians?’,

in Communion and Otherness (2006), pp. 171–77 (at the end of ‘The Trinity
and Personhood: Appreciating the Cappadocian Contribution’)
‘On Being Other: Towards an Ontology of Otherness’, in Communion and
Otherness (2006), pp. 13–98
‘The Father as Cause: Person Generating Otherness’, in Communion
and Otherness (2006), pp. 113–54 (the text incorporates, with
modifications, an unpublished paper presented at King’s College
London under the title ‘The Father as Cause: A Response to Alan
Torrance’, London, 1998)
Italian translation: ‘Il Padre come causa: la persona che genera alterità’, in
Communione e alterità, trans. by M. Campatelli and G. Cesareo (2016),
pp. 130–77
‘One Single Source: An Orthodox Response to the Clarification on the
Filioque’, in The One and the Many (2010), pp. 41–45
‘The Mystery of the Church in Orthodox Tradition’, in The One and the Many
(2010), pp. 136–46
‘Relational Ontology: Insights from Patristic Thought’, in J. Polkinghorne
(ed.), The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science
and Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2010), pp. 146–56
‘Trinitarian Freedom: Is God Free in Trinitarian Life?’, in G. Maspero and
R. Wozniak (eds), Rethinking Trinitarian Theology: Disputed Questions
and Contemporary Issues in Trinitarian Theology (London: T. & T. Clark,
2012), pp. 193–207
‘Person and Nature in the Theology of St Maximus the Confessor’, in M.
Vasiljevic (ed.), Knowing the Purpose of Creation through the Resurrection
(Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2013), pp. 85–113

Secondary Bibliography of Zizioulas’ Articles and Other

Contributions (in Chronological Order)
‘La communauté eucharistique et la catholicité de l’église’, Istina 14, no. 1
(1969), pp. 67–88; republished in L’être ecclésial (1981), pp. 111–35
‘The Eucharist Community and the Catholicity of the Church’, One in
Christ 6 (1970), pp. 314–37; republished as ‘Eucharist and Catholicity’,
in Being as Communion (1985), pp. 143–69
‘Die pneumatologische Dimension der Kirche’, in Internationale Katholische
Zeitschrift 2 (1973), pp. 133–47
‘La dimensione pneumatologica della Chiesa’, Communio 2 (1973),
pp. 468–76
‘The Pneumatological Dimension of the Church’, translated from
German by W.J. O’Hara, Communio: International Catholic Review 1,
no. 2 (1974), pp. 142–58; republished in The One and the Many (2010),
pp. 75–90
Bibliography 269

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 Index

Abraham, 196n 57n, 61, 64, 65n, 66n, 67n, 68-9, 70,
Adam, 197n, 199n 72, 73-4, 75, 77, 81, 82, 83, 90n, 109-
agapē (love), 168, 170, 193n, 205-6 10, 111, 112-14, 115-25, 128, 157, 182n,
Agouridis, S., 214, 215n, 230n, 242n 211, 216, 238n, 239, 241n, 245, 255
aitia (cause), 10, 125-6, 132, 248, 253n, 260 Bathrellos, D., 94n
Alberigo, G., 64n Beeley, C.A., 126n, 127, 131n, 133n, 134n,
Alfeev, I., 7n 137, 139n
Alston, W.P., 238n Berdyaev, N., 4
Amphilochius of Iconium, 31n, 51, 56n Boethius, x, 67, 66n
anarchon (unoriginated, or absence of Bos, H., 7n
principiality), 128-30, 159-60 Botturi, F., 201n
apophaticism, 5, 17n, 27, 55n, 56, 116n, 241 Bouyer, L., 251n
archē (principle), 10, 16n, 140 Bracci, M., 195n
Aristotle, 13n, 29, 54, 147 Bradshaw, P.F., 105n
Arius/Arianism/Arians, 12, 14, 19, 63, 80, Buber, M., 4, 198n
107, 143n, 147 Bulgakov, S., 4, 230n, 253n
Asproulis, N., 4n, 133n, 263n
Athanasius, x, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12-23, 26, 32, Cappadocians, the, x, 7, 9, 23-84, 88, 90,
33, 36, 39, 43, 62, 63, 70-1, 80-1, 93, 97, 95, 96, 99, 100, 110-11, 114n, 115, 212,
106n, 108-9, 114n, 189, 229 214, 247n
atomon (individual), 4, 7-8, 58-9, 66, 85n, cataphaticity, 116n
95n, 151n, 174 causality/causation/causativity/cause,
Augustine, x, 54, 106n, 130n, 166, xvi, 6, 130-45, 150-1, 172-5, 192, 198-
250-1, 259 9, 201, 210
Awad, N.G., 110n, 117n, 145n choice, 190, 191
Ayres, L., 146n Chrysostom, Liturgy of, 5n, 105, 123n
Clement of Alexandria, 39
‘Babylonian captivity’, 3n Clement of Rome, 108n
Balthasar, H.U. von, 91n Clément, O., 248n
baptism, 5 Collins, P.M., 199, 203n
Basil, Liturgy of, 5n, 105, 123n Coloman, V., 184n
Basil of Ancyra, 24n communio/communicatio, 36-7, 172n
Basil of Caesarea, 9, 14, 19, 25, 27n, 29n, communion, divine-human, 6;
30nn, 31, 32, 33-7, 38, 39, 40-1, 43, relational, 17; see also koinōnia
44-5, 46n, 48, 49, 50, 52nn, 53nn, 56, Congar, Y., 250n, 251-2, 259
276 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

Constantinople I (381), 12, 64, 79-84, Fraine, J. de, 197n

244, 248n; Constantinople II (553), 64 Francis, pope, 263n
consubstantiality; see homoousion freedom, xvi, 4, 6, 8, 63, 91-2, 97, 98, 163-
creatio ex nihilo, 11, 62 91, 195-6, 206-8, 224, 232, 235-64
Creeds, ancient, 105-9
Cvetković, V., 88n Galot, J., 103n
Cyril of Alexandria, 142, 248, 250, 259 Garrigues, J.M., 240, 250n, 251n
Cyril of Jerusalem, 106 gift, 170-1
Gnosticism, 106, 108n
Davitti, M., 33n Gregory of Nazianzus, 27, 28n, 40, 42, 47,
De Angelis, B., 89n, 91n, 93n 54-5, 61, 67n, 68n, 69, 70, 72, 80-1, 99,
death, 8 110, 112, 114, 115n, 119, 125-50, 172n,
diaphora (difference), 95 175n, 195n, 208n, 209, 239, 241, 253,
dictated otherness; see otherness, 254n, 259
dictated Gregory of Nyssa, xvi, 28, 30n, 31-2, 36,
Dionysius the Areopagite, (Ps.), 97, 98, 38, 48, 50n, 54n, 55, 56-7, 68n, 70, 72,
190, 233, 259 80n, 119, 150-60, 203n, 241-2, 243n,
Dostoevsky, F., 3 245, 247, 248
Durand, E., 207n, 214n Greshake, G., 37n, 148, 172n
Durrwell, F.-X., 216n, 242n, 243n Groppe, E.T., 172n, 237n
dyad, 134-5 Guillén, D.G., 131n, 132, 148-9
Gunton, C.E., 9, 36, 54n, 147, 214n, 255
ecstaticity, 6, 8, 164, 176-7, 257
Edwards, M.J., 215n Halleux, A. de, 35, 38, 39n, 45n, 66n,
Egan, J.P., 132n 72n, 78
Eikelboom, L., 178n, 189n, 200 Harnack, A. von, 80n
ekporeusis (procession), 134n Harrison, V., 172n, 237n
ekstasis (ecstasy, exodus from the self), 9, Hasker, W., 188n
94-101, 164, 166, 168, 171, 204 Hausherr, I., 6n
energies, 52n Heidegger, M., 11, 12n
enhypostaton (hypostasised), 89 Hilary of Poitiers, 132n
enousion (essentialised), 89 Hippolytus, 61, 64, 65
entelecheia (entelechy), 13n Holy Spirit, 24, 47, 50-1, 82-4, 107, 118-
Epiphanius, 71n 19, 134-5, 156, 201-8, 241, 242, 244-52
epistemology, eucharistic, 5-6 Homoiousians, 14n, 80n
erōs (love), 98-9, 170-1, 247n, 264 homoousion (consubstantiality), 9, 12-22,
Eucharist, 5 35, 42-6, 80, 81, 82-3, 90n, 110n, 121,
Eunomians/Eunomius, 19, 24, 25, 70n, 137, 145, 216, 232
110, 112, 125, 126, 130, 145, 158, 216 homotimia (equality of honour), 244
Evdokimov, P., 230n, 253n hypokeimenon (substratum), 13n
existence, 169-70 hypostasis (a subsistent being), 9, 10, 12,
existentialism, ix-x, 7n, 90, 162n, 180, 224 13n, 19, 23-7, 29, 30-3, 43, 46-101, 112-
13, 225, 228
Faith and Order Commission, 1 hypostatic, 164
Farrow, D., 238n hypostaticity, 6, 8, 164, 176-7, 257
Father, the, 10, 11, 20-1, 23, 26, 39-42,
45, 47, 50, 54-5, 57, 61, 69, 70, 76, 77, idiōma (particular characteristic), 85
102-256 idion (what is specific to the individual), 52
Filioque, 248n, 249-52 idiotētes (distinctive properties), 68
Florovsky, G., xi, 1, 3 Ignatius of Antioch, 7, 63, 108n
Index 277

Incarnation, 88, 90 Macedonius/Macedonians, 143n

inclusiveness, 196 McCall, T., 188, 189nn, 215
individual; see atomon Mackinnon, M., 17n
individualism, x, 182, 184, 187-8, 190-1, Macquarrie, J., 12n
220, 221 Marcellians/Marcellus, 66n, 152n
ingenerate/ingenerateness, 113-15, Maspero, G., 50n, 53n, 54n, 57n, 155n,
130n, 158 157nn, 243n
Irenaeus of Lyons, 7, 63, 106 Mateo-Seco, L.F., 113n
irreducibility, 222-3, 234 Matsoukas, N., 188n
Maximus the Confessor, 7, 9, 28, 29n,
Jevtich, A., 34n 29nn, 31n, 48n, 50, 53, 70n, 76,
John Damascene, x, 31n, 47n, 51, 53, 57, 84-101, 134n, 190, 195n, 223, 226n,
58n, 65n, 66n, 212n, 216, 247n 228, 233, 247, 250, 254n, 259
Johnson, A.R., 197n Meijering, E.P., 13n
Joint Commission for Catholic– Meredith, A., 131n
Orthodox Dialogue, 1 Meyendorff, J., 1, 248n
Jungmann, J.A., 105n Micallef, J., 77n, 213
Justin Martyr, 63n, 108n, 241n Milano, A., 9, 14n, 20-1, 35n, 36, 60n,
61n, 64n, 65-6, 77, 81, 110n
Kasper, W., 1n, 108n modalism, 14n, 24
Kelly, J.N.D., 18n, 20, 30n, 39n, 80n, 81, mode of existence; see tropos hyparxeōs
106n, 107, 153n, 154n Moingt, J., 62n
kenoticism, 205n Moltmann, J., 240
Knežević, R., xiiin, xivn, 182n, 231, 238n, monad; see dyad
252n monarchy, divine, 135-7, 143, 146, 148-
koinōnia (communion), 9, 12, 17, 30-46, 50, 213
148, 171-2, 209, 229, 232 monoenergism, 84
Koutloumousianos, C., 32n, 40-2, 44n, Monothelites, 91n
103n, 111n, 116n, 134n, 142n, 144n, Moreschini, C., 43n, 47n, 64-5, 81, 83,
146n, 162n, 182n, 218n, 227n, 231, 87n, 96, 127n, 131, 132n, 133nn, 144,
258, 262-3 134, 135n, 136, 138n, 141n, 145n, 148,
kreitton (best), 157-60 151nn, 236, 246n
Mühlen, H., 20n
LaCugna, C.M., 77, 195n mysticism, eucharistic, 6
Ladaria, L.F., 56n, 133n
Larchet, J.-C., 55n, 58n, 72n, 75n, 84n, nature, 4, 8, 42n, 92-3, 164, 180n, 184-5,
87n, 88n, 105n, 224n, 225n, 258 218-24, 232
Leontius of Byzantium, 66n, 77n necessity, 4, 99, 178, 180n, 190, 232-3, 235
Lévinas, E., 4, 11, 12n Nédoncelle, M., 60n
lex orandi, 10 neopatristic synthesis, 3
logos physeōs (principle of nature), 9, 12, Neoplatonism, 40, 108n, 138, 143, 203
84-9, 90-1, 99 Nicaea, Council of, 12-15, 244
Lossky, V., 4, 65n, 184n, 205n, 216, 223, Nissiotis, N., 3n
230n, 234, 248n, 258
Loudovikos, N., 21n, 24n, 29nn, 45n, 48, O’Hara, W.J., 186n
58nn, 66nn, 67, 69n, 71n, 89n, 90n, ontology, relational, 11, 237-8
93n, 139n, 179n, 185n, 207n, 215n, Origen/Origeneians, 15n, 39, 61, 63n,
224, 228n, 232, 258 67n, 71n, 108n
Louth, A., 6n otherness, dictated, 143, 172, 184, 187,
love; see agapē, erōs 192, 218, 262
278 The Father’s Eternal Freedom

ousia (substance), 9, 12-13, 14, 17-21, Robinson, P.M.B., 255n

23-42, 47-52, 67-79, 84-94, 110-11, Rogers, M., 237n
119, 126-8, 215-18, 225-32 Rostock, N., 146n
Russell, N., 2n, 3n, 7n
Palamas, Gregory, 52n, 75n, 247n
Panagopoulos, I. 52n Sabellians/Sabellius, 15n, 24, 25, 42, 43,
Pannenberg, W., 194n 62, 63, 67, 71n, 78n, 81, 107, 109-10,
Papanikolaou, A., 4n, 7n, 65n, 147, 173n, 125, 136, 147
205n, 211, 219, 223n, 243nn, 252n, 261 Sani, C., 136
Paul of Samosata, 14n, 43 schesis; see relation
Pavlidis, S., 27n, 249n Schmemann, A., 5n
pēgē (source), 10, 132 Sherwood, P., 86n
perichōrēsis (coinherence), 55n, 57, 69, 124, Septuagint, 106
125n, 145, 147, 156-7, 158, 211-14, 259 Simonetti, M., 83
Perishich, V., 75n Skliris, D., 89n
person/personhood, 4, 5, 6-8, 12, 60, Son, the, 11, 13, 16, 20-1, 23, 24, 26, 45,
90n, 92-4, 156, 172, 221-4, 233; see 47, 48, 50, 57, 61, 69, 77, 80-2, 88, 112-
also prosōpon 14, 115n.48, 118-22, 126-40, 154, 156,
personalism, 10, 39, 44, 78, 81, 83, 84, 157, 159, 201-8, 240-4
109, 139, 222 Spirit; see Holy Spirit
personality, corporate, 196, 209n, 213 Spiteris, I., 161, 188n, 230, 261
Peterson, E., 156n Stăniloae, D., 230n, 240
Petrà, B., 3n, 161, 164-5, 248n, 253n stasis (rest), 97-8, 195, 254
phora (motion), 97-8 Stavrou, M., 230n
Photius of Constantinople, 262 Stead, C., 39n
physis (nature), 13n, 28-9, 66, 92-3 Stoicism, 108n
Plato, 108n, 115, 147 substance; see ousia, substantia
Plotinus, 54, 147, 166, 232 substantia, 13n
Pontifical Council for Promoting Swete, H.B., 248n
Christian Unity, 247
Porphyry, 54, 166 taxis (order), x, 51, 11n, 114, 123-6, 134,
potestas (power), 106-7 139, 146n, 153-4, 156, 174, 197, 218,
Prestige, G.L., 14n, 18n, 22, 35, 43nn, 239, 241, 259
44n, 53n, 62n, 63nn, 65n, 77n, 79n, Tertullian, 61, 62n, 64, 65, 67, 106n, 108n
109, 114n Theunissen, M., 4
prosōpon (person), 9, 12, 26, 59-67, 84, Theodoret of Cyrus, 248
85n, 109-10 Theodosius I, emperor, 83
Theokritoff, E., 2n
Rahner, K., 103, 213 Theophilus of Antioch, 107
receptivity, 140, 149, 202n Thunberg, L., 223n
reciprocity, 149, 166, 200-1, 206, 207, 233, Tillard, J.-M., 36n, 38n.
243 Tillich, P., xiii, xivn, 1
relation (schesis), 16-19, 40, 53-9, 93-4, Torrance, A.J., 147, 148n, 214, 173n, 214n
117, 139-40, 155, 165-7, 168. 194-5, Torrance, T.F., 71n, 77n
214, 234, 236-7 triad; see dyad
Robinson, E., 12n Trinity, 71n, 82-3, 172, 182-3, 189, 191-6,
Robinson, H.W., 196n 201-8, 218-20, 231, 233, 236-40, 253-6
Index 279

Trisoglio, F., 84n Vincelli, M., 136

tritheism, 25 Vlachos, I., 37n, 60n, 92n, 228n
tropos hyparxeōs (mode of existence), 9, Volf, M., 161
10, 12, 49-52, 58n, 72, 73n, 76, 77n, Voskressenskaia, J., 193n
86, 88-9, 99-100, 125, 138, 224, 238-9
Tsatsis, A., 7n Ware, K., 36
Turcescu, L., 7n, 58n will/willing, 90-4, 142-5
uncausedness, 172-5
unity, divine, 39-42, 44, 208-14 Yannaras, C., 3, 6n, 53n, 259
Varasi, D., 7n
Ventis, H., 6n Zachhuber, J., 9, 32n, 36