From fallen to ecclesial existence:
Zizioulas’ christian answer to death and decay
Though conceived in the spirit of eschatological hope, Zizioulas’ teachings do suggest realistically that regeneration of creation may slip from view without the Church’s example of liturgical practices as actually foundational for human flourishing...
Por Manuel Sumares
In “Truth and Communion,” John Zizioulas makes a brief but suggestive comparison on how Western theology’s treatment of the relation between history and ontology differs from that of the Greek Church Fathers: “/…/ the problem of the relationship between truth and history is tackled not /-- as it is in the West since Augustine -- / from the viewpoint of time in relation to eternity, but from being and life in relation to death and decay.” (1) Faithful to the vision of Fathers of the Eastern Church, Zizoulas, also insists that the nature of Christian truth is to save and restore that which is passing into nothingness. In the essays published in Being as Communion, his reflections on “Preserving God’s Creation” and “Proprietors or Priests of Creation,” the vocation of the Church is not seen fundamentally as transcending of the condition of mutability, of the impermanence of created things. Rather, in following Christ’s own high-priestly example, her life is also one of “lifting up” and placing a broken creation on the path of restored life in God: our “fallen existence,” needs to be met and transformed by the specific energies that constitute “ecclesial existence.” The saving effects of the grace given through the Church are meant to reach the entirety of creation.
To take the measure of Zizioulas’ thinking, the ontological bearing of the Church has to be kept in mind: Being is ultimately communion, moreover a communion that reflects God’s own reality. “The mystery of the Church, even in its institutional dimension, is deeply bound to the being of man, to the being of the world, and to the very being of God.” (2) But, from within this general ontological frame of thought, what particularly interests me in Zizioulas’ account is (what I might call) the “organics” of ecclesial existence. Implying a Eucharistic vision of the world that is so central to the Orthodox tradition, ecclesial existence’s call to be life-giving involves an insistence that creation, even fallen, may be sanctified through the liturgical practices and sacramental life of Church. A healed creation, mediated by the Church, will overcome the nature/ supernatural divide; it will consist in “the single reality of nature and creation – even to the point of the identification of earthly and heavenly reality.” (3) An important aspect of how Zizioulas conceives the getting from the “here” of fallen existence to the “there” of ecclesial existence lies in his discussion of the hypostases that correspond to the two modes of existence, i.e., the respective representations of the human being that they express. With the reality of the Church and the restored communion to which she aspires in view, this essay will seek to reconstruct the steps at the heart of Zizioulas’ Christian answer to death and decay in creation.
The ”hypostasis of biological existence”: the prospect of death and decay in the created order
Working with the conviction that the Church constitutes the milieu where human persons may attain personhood, Zizioulas nevertheless pays special attention to man’s biological mode of existence that he deems as already hypostatic. His description of this state of human existence deserves attentive consideration for the inchoate sense of communion with which a human being comes into the world through biological conception and birth.
Presupposing already a communion between two people, biological existence – Zizioulas argues -- bears in itself an erotic desiring in search for completion in a reality beyond itself; it possesses “a tendency towards an ecstatic transcendence of individuality through creation.” (4) He sees that this tendency is at the mercy of two complicit “passions” that undermine the yearning for communion. Firstly, an “ontological necessity,” based on natural instinct, curtails the potential for the exercise of freedom, for the source of its impulse “upwards” remains anchored in the body experienced (or endured, as in paschein) as part of nature and, thereby, subject to its exigencies.
Secondly, the curtailing of the ascending movement toward communion provides the circumstances for the fall into individualism and implicit self-interest. In spite of making gestures of communication with others, a pattern of “separation of the hypostases” emerges: like the passion of ontological necessity that is endured in biological hypostasis, so too is the weight of individualism that cannot deliver itself from itself, i.e., that is left short of the personhood towards which it naturally tends: “The body tends towards the person but leads finally to the individual.”(5) In sum, the attempt to attain personhood through biological hypostasis contains the seeds for its own frustration: because it stems exclusively from its biological sources, it necessarily bears the mark of self-interest and the propensity toward self-affirmation over against others. Unsuccessful in attaining that kind of affirmation that originates from self-less love freely offered in communion with others, the yearning for personhood is blocked by the bounds of individuality. The result is the “tragic ‘self-negation’ of its own hypostasis (dissolution and annihilation of the body and individuality) which in the attempt to affirm itself as hypostasis discovers that finally its ‘nature’ has let it along a false path towards death.”(6) Therein lie the tragedy of the human condition and the nature of sin, i.e., “the tragic prerogative of the person alone,”(7) the situation of which is appropriately called “fallen,” indeed deadly, since it finds itself excluded from the economy of love and, thus, of life.
Fallen existence is, at bottom, not the result of introducing a new reality into the world, namely sin. Sin is rather signalled by the state of non-being, or lack of communion. There is nothing properly creative about sin, except for the nothingness that it tries to make into something.(8) Here, being, truth, and life are not equated with communion. On the contrary, fallen existence is implicitly a declaration of independence, “the refusal to make being dependent on communion.”(9) This might take the form of a rejection of the status of creaturehood, or of a decisive attenuating of the human creature’s responsibility toward the Creator God, an ignoring of the invitation to participate in divine life. Whatever the instance, creation left on its own will tend to drift into self-enclosed autonomy and, ultimately, its own demise.
Zizioulas sees that the effects of this mode of existence on subsequent ontological reflection, especially as it has been practiced in the West, can be noted in certain habits of thought. For example, there is the prioritisation of being and thought vis-à-vis the dynamics of relations that constitutes communion. In other words, for him, the systematic dissociation of knowledge and truth from the act of communion bears the mark of fallen existence: under the influence of the passion of individualisation mentioned above, by separating being from communion, ontology ultimately individualises being/ creation and weakens its bond to the source of life: “Death intervenes not as the result of disobedience but as a result of this individualisation of nature to which the whole cosmos is subjected.”(10) The reach of fallen existence is deep and wide.
Contemporary mankind may now begin to envisage and actually experience the cosmic dimensions of fallen existence in the ecological crisis, the global reach of which cannot be circumvented. For Zizioulas,
/The ecological crisis/ is a problem that is not simply to do with well-being but with the very being of humanity and perhaps of creation as a whole. It is difficult to find any aspect of what we call ‘evil’ or ‘sin’ that would bear such all-embracing and devastating power as ecological evil.(11)
The enormity of the problem has, however, the advantage of tracing with even greater clarity the conceptual parameters that define the status of created reality in relation to human sin. It also provides the possibility of appreciating the full scope ecclesial existence and its liturgical response to the amplitude of fallen existence.
Creation ex nihilo: the ultimate context for the hypostasis of biological existence
The significance of the first passion that Zizioulas attributes to biological existence, namely, “ontological necessity,” can be more fully appreciated in the light of the Christian understanding of creation ex nihilo. The emphasis placed on the “nothing” from which creation has come about does not suggest a void that precedes the emergence of the world, but rather the radical dependence on the will of God. Without any pre-conditions except divine volition, that which is created will have conditions of its very own that are distinguished from the uncreated nature of God. Among these conditions are space and time that, before creation, once were not. In still other words, God created that which is not-God, i.e., that which is finite and which is subject to its own spatial and temporal constraints – constraints that do not pertain to the Creator God. For our subject, this demarcation is most important, for it underlies the fact that what has a beginning in time and is situated in space will also have an end: “The universe is not eternal, neither in terms of its beginning nor in terms of its end; it is mortal, and mortality in this case is as absolute as the use of the term ‘nothing’. It signifies total extinction.”(12) It can be thereby readily understood that created biological existence must endure the same fate: human creaturehood is intimately and necessarily bound to conditions of created reality taken as a whole.
As in the hypostasis of biological existence, the impulse toward transcendence finds itself trapped in the space and time vectors that are organically part of creation. Neither biological existence, nor creation logically has the power to self-generate a capacity to overcome mortality. However, it is nevertheless intrinsic to the Christian account of creation that mankind bears the image of God: the freedom to which man aspires is also the indication of an aspiring toward transcendence and communion with God and for which he was created. So, whilst man’s existence implies an immediate and organic relationship with the created world, there is equally the implication made to participate in the uncreated life of God. The Fall, as outlined in the second passion, namely, individualism, consists in preferring self-sufficiency to communion. The finite world that God created and necessarily subject to death and decay could only survive its mortality in communion with Him, a communion that He desired to see realised in man who would be his priestly mediator, uniting finite creation with its uncreated source. However, “By replacing God with himself – that is, a finite created being – man condemned the world to finitude, mortality, decay and death. In other words, the human being rejected his role as the priest of creation by making himself God in creation.”(13) An existential gulf between the created and the uncreated that man was created to bridge reflects the fallen state of both man and creation. But, again, God did not create the world so that it might perish. Indeed, “ For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. (John 3:16).” Hence, Christ came to be the priest of creation and performed this office through His Cross and Resurrection. The work of uniting the world and offering it back to God remains that of the Church, His Body.
The hypostasis of ecclesial existence: Being means life and life means communion
Whilst biological existence is constituted by conception and the resultant birth, ecclesial existence has its start in the rebirth provided by the sacrament of baptism. Here the personhood, the hypostasising, is the new mode of existence, grounded in the uncreated, that lifts man up from his fallen state that is associated with the vulnerability of createdness: ontological freedom supervenes where ontological necessity used to be. Importantly, the acquiring of this regenerated mode of existence has for its vehicle the Church. In this sense, she deserves the image of Mother with which she is often identified: the Church, the Body of Christ, brings into the world a new kind of human being, one whose relationship with the world is a characterised by a freedom and openness, i.e., its catholicity, that does not know the limitation of the laws of nature: “As an ecclesial hypostasis man thus proves that what is valid for God can also be valid for man: the nature does not determine the person; the person enables the nature to exist; freedom is identified with the being of man.”(14) From “the womb of the Church,” the Holy Spirit brings into being a new family, the members of which, each and every one, are called to be Christ and to assume, in time and space, the priestly vocation of redirecting fallen existence, through the dynamics of the sacramental life of the Church, towards the living God.
The reversing of the individualistic tendency of biological existence that was begun with the sacrament of baptism is completed in that of the Eucharist which makes manifest the priestly function of a redeemed humanity. In remembrance of Christ’s own self-offering, into which He brings the world He came to save, the Church’s Eucharistic offering gathers together elements of the created material world in form of the bread and the wine. They are received as a gift to be rendered again in thanksgiving to its divine source. Recalling the priestly exclamation at the Eucharist, “Thine of Thine own we offer unto Thee,” Zizioulas underscores the restitution of all things in God through Christ and His Church: “/…/ the world belongs to God and we refer it back to its Creator through action of Christ as the real and true man, who is the head of the Body of the Church.”(15) Ecclesial existence is thus affirmed as also Eucharistic existence and as that through which created nature is embraced and made capable of communion. Moreover, the Eucharist as the action of the whole Church, as the Body of Christ Himself, constitutes an affirmation of creation, refusing corruption as the last word by offering it to the Creator who is life without end.
The organics of ecclesial existence is, in conclusion, based on the sacramental life that constitutes the Church. Through the baptismal and the Eucharistic actions of the Church, the living God continually enters creation and emancipates it from its fallen state: in the place of death and sin, new sanctified life is given. For Zizioulas, the union between the created and the uncreated, life and communion, overcomes the constraints of time and space without undoing them. Rather they are graced with a new dimension. What the sacraments, and particularly the Eucharist, offer the world is the promise of transformation, “a leaven that will lead the entire creation by a sanctifying presence.”(16) Through the organic and priestly relationship between man and the rest of creation, the attainment of ecclesial existence, energised by the sacraments, abrogates the effects of ontological necessity and individualism, namely death and corruption. Though conceived in the spirit of eschatological hope, Zizioulas’ teachings do suggest realistically that regeneration of creation may slip from view without the Church’s example of liturgical practices as actually foundational for human flourishing: communion does not occur merely by thinking about it, but through acts of communion that are persistently repeated through time with the reminder that creation is not just given but is more fundamentally a gift to be celebrated.
Endnotes
(1) John Zizioulas, “Truth and Communion,” Being as Communion (Crestwood: St. Vladimir’s Seminary, 1985), p. 95.
(2) Zizioulas, “Introduction,” Being as Communion, p.15.
(3) John Zizioulas, The Eucharistic Communion and the World (London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 126.
(4) John Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being,” Being as Communion,” p. 50.
(5) John Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being,” p. 51.
(6) John Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being,” p.51
(7) John Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being,” p. 52.
(8) Cf., Conor Cunningham, Genealogy of Nihilism: Philosophies of Nothing and the Difference of Theology (London: Routledge, 2002). For Cunningham, the logic of nihilism is fundamentally idolatrous: to wish to make nothing into something real. It is a kind of creation ex nihilo, but grounded in self-will.
(9) John Zizioulas, “Truth and Communion, “ p. 102.
(10) John Zizioulas, “Truth and Communion,” p. 105.
(11) John Zizioulas, “Preserving God’s Creation,” The Eucharistic Communion and the World (London: T&T Clark, 2011), p. 143. In this essay, I shall not venture much further into what seems to me Zizioulas’ rather tenuos attempt to associate the “priest of creation” theme with a more general appeal to a liturgical culture, of which he feels the world needs and that would be a way of imagining a solution for the ecological crisis. Moreover, he himself appears to understand the difficulty that a liturgical culture, modelled on priesthood, would find acceptance in the world as we know it. However, Zizioulas is stronger when centred on the Church and, as we shall see, on priesthood of Christ at the heart of how the Church must understand herself in Eucharistic and eschatological terms. Still, citing of the ecological crisis has significance in order to visualise the scope of fallen existence.
(12) Zizioulas, “Preserving God’s Creation,” p. 160.
(13) John Zizioulas, “Proprietors or Priests of Creation,” in Eucharistic Communion and the World, p. 138.
(14) Zizioulas, “Personhood and Being,” p. 57.
(15) Zizioulas, “Proprietors or Priests of Creation,” p. 139.
(16) Zizioulas, “The Eucharistic Vision of the World, “ p. 129.