Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church

Author: John D. Zizioulas

The voice of John Zizioulas may turn out to be the fresh voice for which theology and especially ecclesiology have long been waiting. In the context of a complete theology, which includes extended consideration of the major theological topics — the Trinity, Christology, eschatology, ministry, and sacrament, but above all, the Eucharist — the author propounds a fresh understanding, based on the early Fathers and the Orthodox tradition, of the concept of person, and so of the Church itself.

His consideration of the local church as "catholic" in the literal sense, and the need to understand the universal Church not as a superstructure but as the communion of all Churches, provides the program for the ecclesiology of the future.

Yves Congar has written that he considers the author to be "one of the most original and profound theologians of our epoch" and that he "presents a penetrating and coherent reading of the tradition of the Greek Fathers."

The Author: John Zizioulas is Metropolitan of Pergamon in the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople.