“Person” versus “Individual”, and Other Modern Misreadings of Gregory of Nyssa

Abstract

This article argues that, despite claiming that his own ontology of personhood is patristic–based, John Zizioulas has not convincingly exegeted the Cappadocian theology of person, especially that of Gregory of Nyssa and Basil of Caesarea. This is unfortunate, given the fact that there are dozens of patristic quotations from, or references to, various Greek Fathers (especially the Cappadocians) throughout Zizioulas’s works. Instead, he uses nineteenth– and twentieth–century insights which he then foists on the Cappadocians. This methodology leads him to misleading conclusions. Zizioulas is therefore in error when he contends that the Cappadocians did not understand a person as an individual or when he credits them with having had the same concerns we moderns have when combating individualism today.

Individuality in Theological Anthropology and Theories of Embodied Cognition

“…11. For criticisms of Zizioulas's theology of personhood, see Gregersen 2000;Grenz 2001;LaCugna 1990;Russell 2003;Turcescu 2002. 12. The importance of the question "who am I?"…”

“…Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas (, ), for example, famously grounds his own relational anthropology in the Cappadocian Fathers. Others suggest, however, as Lucian Turcescu (, 535) also notes, that our specifically contemporary understanding of relational personhood has much more recent origins, properly taking shape only in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.…”

“…For criticisms of Zizioulas's theology of personhood, see Gregersen ; Grenz ; LaCugna ; Russell ; Turcescu .…”

PERSONHOOD AND PATRISTICS IN ORTHODOX THEOLOGY: REASSESSING THE DEBATE1

“…At the same time, personalism has a complex philosophical history in the West, and what Turcescu describes as the 'foisting' of personalist categories onto patristic texts is a delicate and difficult business. 35 This modern aspect of personalism East and West and its relationship to patristic thought deserves a good deal more attention than it has received, and I intend to constructively pursue the topic in the future. To conclude, however, it would be worth turning to Vladimir Lossky for an admirable summary of the whole question.…”

Modern Greek Theologians and the Greek Fathers

“…André de Halleux, for example, strongly objects to Zizioulas's giving priority to "personal" categories over essential ones in his exposition of the Cappadocian Fathers (Halleux 1986). Most recently Lucian Turcescu has argued that Gregory of Nyssa does not distinguish between "person" and "individual" and that, therefore, a relational ontology cannot be extrapolated from the Cappadocian Fathers (Turcescu 2002). 24 Two Greek scholars already mentioned in connection with Yannaras, J. Panagopoulos and S. Agouridis, accuse Zizioulas of attributing to the Fathers ideas that he has in reality imported from philosophi-cal personalism and existentialism (Panagopoulos 1985;Agouridis 1990).…”