Amsterdam Lectures 2013-14:
The Ways of Modern Orthodox Theology: Part II
Lecture IV: Theology of Patristic Renewal: Fr John Romanides and
Metropolitan John of Pergamon (Zizioulas)
‘Theology of Patristic Renewal’; ‘Neopatristic synthesis’; ‘Neo-Orthodoxy’;
‘Christian Personalism’—different umbrella terms, under which different theologians
shelter in various ways.
John Zizioulas: born in Greece in 1931; studied at Thessaloniki and Athens; spent
year 1954/5 at the Ecumenical Institute, Bossey, near Geneva: Harvard MA, studying
with Georges Florovsky and Paul Tillich; a little later returned to Harvard, doctoral
thesis on St Maximos with Florovsky, and another with Prof. A.G. Williams
submitted to Athens (Eucharist, Bishop, Church: the Unity of the Church in the
Divine Eucharist and the Bishop during the first Three Centuries), 1965; while in the
US taught at St Vladimir’s Orthodox Theological Seminary, and got to know
Meyendorff and Schmemann; 1964: returned to Athens; 1965: Professor of Church
History there; late 60s with WCC at Geneva; 1970: Edinburgh as lecturer in Patristics,
got to know T.F. Torrance; 1973–86: Professor of Systematic Theology at Glasgow;
1986: consecrated bishop, as Metropolitan of Pergamon; member of the Holy Synod
of the Œcumenical Patriarchate; Founding member of the International OrthodoxRoman Catholic commission, now chairman; formerly member of the AnglicanOrthodox commission.
Theology:
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Communion, κοινωνία
Persons in communion; relationship
Trinity as supreme example of persons in communion
Eucharistic Ecclesiology: ‘The Eucharist makes the Church’
Roots:
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Russian personalism
Florovsky on the Christian uniqueness of the person
Problems:
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Trinity: homoousios and koinonia
Church: too narrowly focused on the bishop
person versus nature
John Romanides: born 1927 in Athens; went to the USA as a small child and
educated there; Holy Cross Orthodox Theological Seminary and Yale University; at
the Institut St-Serge, Paris, 1954/5; 1955: returned to Greece; 1957: submitted his
doctoral thesis at Athens, Τὸ Προπατόρικον Ἁμάρτημα (‘Ancestral Sin’); controversy,
especially with Panagiotis Trembelas, of Athens; returned to the US, taught at Holy
Cross until 1965; met Fr Georges Florovsky, then teaching at Holy Cross and
Harvard; Orthodox observer at Vatican II; also participated in the consultations
between the Oriental Orthodox and the Eastern Orthodox; 1970, returned to Greece,
professor of Dogmatic Theology at Thessaloniki until retirement in 1984; died 2001.
Theology:
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Τὸ Προπατόρικον Ἁμάρτημα (‘Ancestral Sin’): Based on Greek fathers and
eschews Western categories.
o Creation out of nothing
o Divine Freedom
o Divine activities
o Satan
o Man in the image
o The Fall
Anti-western: analogia entis, Filioque, original sin, essence/energies
distinction
Theology of experience: against fides quaerens intellectum
Influence of Carolingians
Bibliography:
Zizioulas:
Eucharist, Bishop, Church: the Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the
Bishop during the first Three Centuries, Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press,
1965; Being and Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church, SVSP, 1985;
second edition 2004; Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and
the Church, SVSP, 2006; The One and the Many: Studies on God, Man, the Church,
and the World Today, Alhambra, CA: Sebastian Press, 2010.
Paul McPartland, The Eucharist Makes the Church: Henri de Lubac and John
Zizioulas in Dialogue, Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1993; The Theology of John
Zizioulas: Personhood and the Church, ed. Douglas H. Knight, Farnham: Ashgate,
2007; Aristotle Papanikolaou, Being with God. Trinity, Apophaticism, and DivineHuman Communion, Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006; Key
Theological Thinkers: from Modern to Postmodern, ed. Staale Johannes Kristiansen
and Svein Rise, Farnham: Ashgate, 2013, 435–47 (Lars Erik Rikheim).
Romanides:
Τὸ Προπατόρικον Ἁμάρτημα, Thessaloniki: Ekdoseis Pournara, 32010 (original ed.,
1957); Δογματικὴ καὶ Συμβολικὴ Θεολογία τῆς Ὀρθοδόξου Καθολικῆς Ἐκκλησίας, 2
vols., Thessaloniki: Ekdoseis Pournara, 41999 (original edition, 1973); Franks,
Romans, Feudalism, and Doctrine: An Interplay between Theology and Society,
Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 1982; Ρωμιοσύνη, Ρωμανία, Ρούμελη,
Τhessaloniki: Ekdoseis Pournara, 1975; Ἐγχειρίδιον. Ἀλληλογραφία π. Ι.Σ.
Ρωμανίδου καὶ καθ. Π.Ν. Τρεμπέλα, Athens: Ekdoseis Armos, 2009.
Andrew J. Sopko, Prophet of Roman Orthodoxy. The Theology of John Romanides,
Dewdney, B.C.: Synaxis Press, 1998.
Also:
Yannis Spiteris, La Teologia ortodossa neo-greca, Bologna: Edizioni Dehoniane,
1992