Table Of ContentPriests of
Creation
Priests of
Creation
John Zizioulas on Discerning an
Ecological Ethos
Edited by John Chryssavgis
and Nikolaos Asproulis
T&T CLARK
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Names: Chryssavgis, John, editor. | Asproulis, Nikolaos, 1975- editor.
Title: Priests of creation: John Zizioulas on discerning an ecological ethos /
edited by John Chryssavgis and Nikolaos Asproulis.
Description: London; New York : T&T Clark, 2021. |
Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Identifiers: LCCN 2020047652 (print) | LCCN 2020047653 (ebook) |
ISBN 9780567699091 (paperback) | ISBN 9780567699107 (hardback) |
ISBN 9780567699121 (epub) | ISBN 9780567699114 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Orthodox Eastern Church–Doctrines. | Zizioulas, Jean, 1931- |
Ecology–Religious aspects–Orthodox Eastern Church. | Nature–Religious
aspects–Orthodox Eastern Church. | Creation. | Human ecology–Religious
aspects–Orthodox Eastern Church.
Classification: LCC BX323 .P75 2021 (print) | LCC BX323 (ebook) |
DDC 261.8/8–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047652
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020047653
ISBN: HB: 978-0-5676-9910-7
PB: 978-0-5676-9909-1
ePDF: 978-0-5676-9911-4
ePUB: 978-0-5676-9912-1
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CONTENTS
Foreword vii
Introduction: Toward an Ecological Ethos 1
I Historical Roots
19
1 St. Paul and the Ecological Problem 21
2 The Book of Revelation and the Natural
Environment 31
3 Creation Theology: An Orthodox Perspective 38
II Theological Approaches
53
4 Orthodoxy and the Ecological Crisis 55
5 A Theological Approach to the Ecological
Problem 61
6 An Orthodox Response to the Environmental
Challenge 73
III Liturgical Perspectives
91
7 Preserving God’s Creation: Three Lectures on
Theology and Ecology 93
vi CONTENTS
8 The Eucharistic Vision of the World 133
9 Proprietors or Priests of Creation? 144
IV Ecological Ethics or Ecological Ethos?
155
10 Ethics or Ethos? A Brief Sketch 157
11 Toward an Environmental Ethic 160
V Scientific and Spiritual Dimensions
173
12 Religion and Science: A Theological Approach 175
13 Humanity and Nature: Learning from the
Indigenous 186
14 Man and Animals 197
VI Ecumenical and Cultural Implications
203
15 Ecological Asceticism: A Cultural Revolution 205
16 Communion and Communication 210
17 Pope Francis and Laudato Si’ 214
Conclusion: From Here to Where? 221
Original Publications 228
Select Bibliography 231
Index of Names 233
Index of Terms 235
FOREWORD
It becomes more and more clear that the ecological crisis which
faces the human family cannot be adequately understood, let alone
responded to, as a purely “managerial” set of problems. The
roots of the crisis lie in a dysfunctional spirituality, and no merely
technical solution will do: the survival of our ecosystem requires
a spiritual revolution. The survival of the material world made
by God—including our own material humanity—depends on our
spiritual renewal, and the spiritual revolution is inseparable from a
rediscovery of our material reality.
For this to be possible, we need a coherent theology of our human
position in the world. For centuries, at least since the beginnings of
the dramatic expansion of the natural sciences in the seventeenth
century, the working assumption of European modernity has been
a grimly distorted version of theological convictions about our
human vocation and our human uniqueness. We have absorbed the
myth that humans are essentially agents defined by instrumental
reason—and thus defined by problem-solving for the sake of their
own survival: the material stuff of our environment has been seen as
entirely subordinate to this model of the priority of the human agent
as technical manager. The traditional and biblical understanding of
the human person as made in the divine image, and thus made in
order freely and lovingly to serve the well-being and balance of the
whole created order, has been overlaid by a false spiritualism allied
with a Promethean ambition for total control over the material
world. Unsurprisingly, Judeo-Christian faith itself has been blamed
by some for the devastation of our environment.
Yet it is precisely this tradition that gives us some of the most
deeply rooted resources for combating the lethal myths that
imprison us. In recent decades, His All-Holiness Ecumenical
Patriarch Bartholomew has been an eminent Christian pioneer in
the recovery of a richer and more faithful theology of human calling
viii FOREWORD
and human dignity—a recovery now also endorsed eloquently in
the Encyclical of Pope Francis, Laudato Si’. And the Patriarch’s
theological vision has been developed in concert with one of the
most creative theological minds of our age, Metropolitan John
Zizioulas of Pergamon. Metropolitan John’s writings on Trinitarian
theology, on Church and Eucharist, and above all on the relational
character of all finite being as the free creation of an infinite agency
that is itself irreducibly relational, have been formative for Christian
thinkers of all confessions and backgrounds.
It is a great gift to have his reflections specifically on the
question of our theological response to ecological crisis gathered
together. Here we have just the coherent and comprehensive
theological resource that we need for “spiritual revolution”—an
impressively wide-ranging vision of what human freedom means
in a fragile material universe. The very fact of creation means
that our world is vulnerable to disintegration (to what the New
Testament and the Fathers knew as phthora, “corruption”). The
finite universe always stands “over” nothingness, held in life solely
by God’s free gift and not resting on any intrinsic quality of its
own, and this means that created freedom exists—in the image of
uncreated freedom—in order to serve and conserve the mutuality
and reciprocal life-sharing of finite beings, the fruitful balance of
all things as they reflect the harmony and abundance of eternal
wisdom. The tragedy of our created freedom is in our turning
away from this vocation to conserve the flow of gift within the
created order to the distorted obsession with preserving our own
privilege and security at the expense of all others, human and
nonhuman. Christ’s work restores to us that lost place of service—
the priestly place we were created to occupy. And the Eucharist in
which Christ’s body draws into itself the material life of the world
around so that it is, by the spirit’s power, transformed into a gift
both to God and from God is the supreme embodiment of the
renewal of our humanity and our whole world that Christ’s life,
death, and resurrection accomplish.
This is the vision which Metropolitan John outlines, with both
passion and subtlety. In these pages, as in everything he has written,
we find a profound challenge to reimagine our humanity in the
living presence of the Triune God and to open ourselves afresh to the
transformation offered and promised by the grace of Christ and the
FOREWORD ix
act of the spirit. For anyone looking for a fully and unapologetically
Christian manifesto for the spiritual revolution we so urgently need,
these pages will be more than welcome.
Rowan Williams
Archbishop of Canterbury (2002–2012)
Master of Magdalene College (2013–2020)
