Eschatology Is One of the Dominant Themes of the Theology of our Time. It is mainly since the work of biblical scholar Johannes Weiss, under the title Die Predigt Jesu vom Reiche Gottes (particularly in its second edition of 1900), that eschatology has begun to occupy the center of Christian theology. One may even say[…..]
Section: From the Eschata To the Present
Between the “Already” and the “Not Yet”: A Journey with Metropolitan John Zizioulas
This article focuses on the transformative journey “from the Omega to the Alpha” with the late Metropolitan John Zizioulas. Here I share personal souvenirs of my encounters with him, recalling how his academic rigor and pastoral warmth deeply enriched my understanding of our faith. Metropolitan John had a unique way of blending the biblical and[…..]
The Eschaton as Mystery and Problematic: Exploring John Zizioulas’s Eschatological Vision
For Christian theology, the eschaton represents both a mystery and a problematic. On the one hand, it expresses a mystery preached and promised by Jesus Christ as the culmination of his work, which penetrates history by confronting the Church, the individual, and history itself with a parousia from beyond. It is a constant experience (and[…..]
Person and Confession: Truth-Telling as a Hypostatic Fact
When I was a senior in college, working on my undergraduate honors thesis on the theme of primacy in the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches, my mentor, the late Father John Meyendorff, told me that I must read Metropolitan John Zizioulas’s Being as Communion. The book had an immediate impact on me, as I could[…..]
John Zizioulas and Otherness: Gender, Sexuality, and the Influence of Zizioulas’s Theology
Metropolitan of Pergamon John D. Zizioulas did not develop a systematic theology of gender and sexuality. According to his theological project— an eschatological ontology that he considered to have been articulated in the Bible and fully realized by the patristic age—sexuality does not belong to the eschatological state of being, the kingdom of God, but[…..]
Eucharistic Democracy: The Political Theology of John Zizioulas
Metropolitan of Pergamon John (Zizioulas) was reluctant to formulate a full-blown political theology. The main reason was that he viewed politics as a domain of coercion and violence, thus distinguishing it from the Church as the place of freedom and non-violent love. His ecclesiological vision that the Eucharist constitutes an anticipation of the future state[…..]