BOOK REVIEW

Being as Communion: Studies in the Personhood of the Church, John D. Zizioulas, Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir's Seminary Press, 1985, reprint 1997, 269 pages, ISBN: 0-88141-029-2.

Reviewed by Mar Melchizedek, St. Elias School of Orthodox Theology

Being as Communion, a book of 269 pages, is written by John D. Zizioulas, professor of theology at the University of Glasgow, and professor at the University of Thessalonica, a representative of the ecumenical patriarchate in dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, and staff member of the Commission on Faith and Order of the World Council of Churches. This book is a compilation of papers presented at various times and places during the late 1960's through the early 1980's. His writings have undergone a special revision by the author to make them suitable for the book edition.

Being as Communion consists of seven chapters: Personhood and Being; Truth and Communion; Christ, the Spirit, and the Church; Eucharist and Catholicity; Apostolic Continuity and Succession; Ministry and Communion; and the Local Church in a Perspective of Communion. For the author the church needs a re-awakening of the patristic understanding of the eucharist. It means that we give up the western idea that the eucharist is just one sacrament among many, an objective act, a means of grace administered by the Church. Rather the celebration of the eucharist is the gathering of the people of God, both the manifestation and the realization of the Church. During this celebration the Church not only lives by the memory of an historic fact – the death and resurrection of Christ, the earthly life of Christ, including the cross and resurrection, but also it accomplishes an eschatological act. Here the Church would taste the very life of the Holy Trinity and would realize man's true being as image of God's own existence. All the fundamental elements which make up the Church's historical presence and structure has to pass through the eucharistic community to be real. No ordination to fundamental ministries of the church takes place outside the eucharistic community. It is here that the Holy Spirit distributes His gifts. The eucharist is not the act of a pre-existing Church; rather it is an event enabling the Church to be present. The eucharist constitutes the Church's very core of being. In the first centuries, the whole Church dwelling in a certain city would come together, namely on Sunday to break the bread. This coming together would transcend all social differences and natural differences, i.e. age, race, etc.

This is unlike today where we have celebrations of the eucharist for children or for students or a eucharist that takes place privately and individually, such as the private mass of the West. The wholeness of the Church was reflected in the structure of the early eucharist. Behind the one altar there was the throne of the one bishop, who was understood as the living image of Christ. Around his cathedra (“throne”) were seated the presbyters, while the deacons assisted in helping in the celebration; in front of the bishop are the people of God. Which is the order of the Church as constituted by virtue of baptism and chrismation ( the idea that the layman belongs to his own order in the Church is fundamental to the understanding of the eucharistic synaxis). This structure was considered the sine qua non for the eucharistic community to exist and express the Church's unity. A fundamental function of' the one bishop was to express in himself the multitude of the faithful in that place. He offered the eucharist to God in the name of the Church, thus bringing before God the whole Body of Christ. He was the one in whom the many united would become one. Orthodox theology insists upon the principle that the one – the bishop – cannot exist without the many – the community – and the many cannot exist without the one.

This theology is expressed in various ways:

a. There is no ordination to the episcopate outside the community;
b. there is no episcopacy without a community attached to it. (In Orthodoxy the mention of the name of the community takes place in the prayer of the ordination of a bishop).

But the opposite is equally true:

a. There is no baptism without the bishop. The many cannot be many without the one.
b. There is no ordination without the presence of the bishop: the bishop is a condition for the existence of the community.

This early practice of only one eucharist under one bishop in one place began to break down with the appearance of the parish as a eucharistic gathering distinct from the episcopal eucharistic assembly. This led to the disassociation of the presbyter from the bishop as well as to the disintegration of the collegial presbyterium itself and to the unfortunate idea that a eucharistic community does not involve all orders. An individual presbyter was enough to create and lead a eucharistic gathering – a parish. This has in turn destroyed the image of the Church as a community in which all orders are necessary. In other words, the parish has made redundant both the deacon and the bishop. (And with the private mass, it made redundant even the laity). It has led to an understanding of the bishop as an administrator rather than a eucharistic president, and the presbyter as a eucharistic specialist, a priest.

The author believes that the proper status of the parish is one of the most fundamental problems facing the Church in both East and West. He states that unlike the Western Church the Orthodox Church has opted for the view that the concept of the local Church is guaranteed by the bishop and not by the presbyter and so the local Church as an entity with full ecclesiastical status is the episcopal diocese and not the parish. But to make this a reality, the only proper solution is the creation of many small episcopal dioceses. Such small dioceses are historically documented. Gregory the Wonderworker became Bishop of Neocaesarea with only seventeen faithful in the diocese.

For John D. Zizioulas the eucharistic assembly gives meaning and understanding to many of the problems and concerns of modern day ecumenical discussions. In this book he has combined the thinking of the early Church Fathers and the eucharistic liturgy with the thinking of modern day philosophers and theologians in seeking an understanding of the universal church in the midst of a multitude of confessional denominations. This is a challenging book and requires careful effort and much re-reading, but the author's thoughtful outlook is well worth the time involved.