Harvard, Florovsky, and the Academic Career

At Harvard Divinity School in 1955–56 Zizioulas met Fr. Georges Florovsky, who supervised the research that became the 1965 Athens dissertation and gave him the neo-patristic programme he would spend his life executing. This file follows the career that followed — Geneva and the World Council of Churches, Edinburgh, Glasgow, King’s College London and Thessaloniki, the consecration as Metropolitan of Pergamon in 1986, the Academy of Athens, and his repose on 2 February 2023.

Tradition: Greek Orthodox (Ecumenical Patriarchate)

Harvard and Florovsky

Zizioulas went to the United States in the mid-1950s and took the M.T.S. from Harvard Divinity School in 1956 (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Brief Biographical Note,” zizioulas.org; John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology,” dating the departure for America to 1955 and the degree to 1956). At Harvard he studied under Fr. Georges Florovsky, then the most influential Orthodox theologian in the English-speaking world and the author of the programme he had named the neo-patristic synthesis: that Orthodox theology must be done not by translating Western dogmatic manuals into Greek or Russian but by recovering the mind — the phronema — of the Fathers and thinking with it about present questions (Louth, Modern Orthodox Thinkers, SPCK, 2015, on Florovsky’s programme and its heirs; Ladouceur, Modern Orthodox Theology, T&T Clark, 2019).

The doctoral research that followed was supervised by Florovsky together with the Harvard church historian George Huntston Williams and the New Testament scholar Krister Stendahl (translator’s and publisher’s note to Zizioulas, Eucharist, Bishop, Church, Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001; John Zizioulas Foundation, “Athens — Doctoral Thesis,” zizioulas.org). The composition of that committee is itself informative: a Russian émigré patristic theologian, a Harvard historian of Christianity, and a Swedish Lutheran New Testament scholar. The dissertation was submitted and defended at the University of Athens in 1965 (see The 1965 Athens Dissertation).

From roughly 1959/1960 to 1964 Zizioulas held a research post or fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks, the Harvard center for Byzantine studies in Washington, D.C., where the dissertation was largely written (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology,” giving 1959–1964; “Brief Biographical Note,” giving a fellowship at the Harvard Foundation for Byzantine Studies at Dumbarton Oaks 1960–1963).

Florovsky’s mark on Zizioulas is deep and double-edged. From Florovsky came the whole orientation — theology as the recovery of the patristic mind, the refusal of the manual tradition, the insistence that Christian Hellenism is a permanent category of the Church’s thought and not a historical accident to be shed. But Florovsky’s own use of the Fathers was more historical and more reticent than Zizioulas’ would be, and one recurring form of the criticism examined in Section 08 is precisely that Zizioulas departed from his teacher: that where Florovsky read the Fathers, Zizioulas built a system with patristic materials (the argument is set out, with the Florovsky–Lossky–Zizioulas line traced as a development and a departure, in the scholarly literature on “existential theology as a challenge to a patristic-based methodology”; see also Georges Florovsky).

Geneva: Faith and Order

In 1967 Zizioulas moved to Geneva to work for the World Council of Churches, serving in the Faith and Order secretariat and eventually as one of its secretaries [Disputed: the Foundation's chronology dates the move to Geneva to 1967; its "Brief Biographical Note" gives service in the Faith and Order secretariat as 1968–1970; obituary notices describe him more loosely as Faith and Order secretary "in the 1970s." The collection gives c. 1967–1970 for the staff appointment and notes that his Faith and Order involvement — including as a member of the Commission — continued long afterwards] (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology” and “Brief Biographical Note,” zizioulas.org; Ecumenical Patriarchate Permanent Delegation to the WCC, “In memoriam Metropolitan Elder John of Pergamon (1931–2023),” 27 February 2023).

Faith and Order in those years was the WCC’s doctrinal commission — the body that would eventually produce the Baptism, Eucharist and Ministry text of 1982 — and it was there that Zizioulas learned to write theology that had to be argued in front of Lutherans, Anglicans, Reformed and Roman Catholics as well as Orthodox. The style of Being as Communion, which states an Orthodox position by locating the exact point at which it diverges from the Western alternatives, is a Faith and Order style.

Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Thessaloniki

Zizioulas’ teaching career in the West is unusually well documented, because the publisher’s note to his Lectures in Christian Dogmatics lists the universities and years in which those lectures were given:

  • University of Edinburgh, 1970–1973 — he came to New College as professor of patristics, brought to Britain by Thomas F. Torrance, the Scottish Reformed theologian, and served as Torrance’s assistant in teaching dogmatics (publisher’s note to Zizioulas, Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, ed. Douglas H. Knight, T&T Clark, 2008; John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology”). The Edinburgh connection is important: T. F. Torrance’s own trinitarian theology and Zizioulas’ developed in conversation and in disagreement, and the Participatio journal of the T. F. Torrance Theological Fellowship devoted a substantial part of its 2013 volume to the comparison (see Asproulis, “T. F. Torrance and John Zizioulas on the Divine Monarchia,” Participatio 4 (2013): 162–189).
  • University of Glasgow, 1973–1987 — a personal chair in systematic theology, held for some fourteen years (publisher’s note to Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 2008; John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology,” dating the Glasgow move to 1973).
  • King’s College London, 1984 and 1989–1998 — visiting professor in the Research Institute in Systematic Theology (publisher’s note to Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 2008; John Zizioulas Foundation, “London,” zizioulas.org). It was at King’s that he delivered the three ecological lectures of 1989 (see The Priest of Creation).
  • University of Thessaloniki, 1984–1998 — professor of dogmatics (publisher’s note to Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, 2008; John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology,” dating the Thessaloniki chair to 1984). [Disputed: the Wikipedia article gives the Thessaloniki chair as beginning in 1986; the Foundation's chronology and the T&T Clark note both give 1984. The collection follows the two sources that agree.]

He also lectured at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome in 1984 and at the University of Geneva (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology”; “Brief Biographical Note”). The Gulandris–Horn Foundation lectures of 1983 in Athens, five in number, were among the settings in which the material of Being as Communion took public shape (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology”).

Consecration: Metropolitan of Pergamon, 1986

On 22 June 1986 Zizioulas was consecrated a bishop in Constantinople and named Metropolitan of Pergamon of the Ecumenical Patriarchate (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Brief Biographical Note,” zizioulas.org, giving 22 June 1986; “John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon,” OrthodoxWiki, same date; John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology,” “Ordained as Metropolitan in Constantinople,” 1986).

Two features of this are worth stating plainly, because they are often missed.

He was consecrated from the lay state. Zizioulas had spent his entire career as a lay academic theologian; he was not a priest of long standing raised to the episcopate but a professor consecrated directly to a metropolitan throne. This was and is canonically irregular in the ordinary sense — an unusual course, taken by the Ecumenical Patriarchate for a theologian it wished to have as a hierarch — and it is occasionally raised by his critics as an emblem of the distance between his theology and the ascetic-parochial life of the Church. The collection reports the fact and the observation without adjudicating the judgment attached to it.

Pergamon is a titular see. The ancient metropolis of Pergamon, in what is now western Türkiye, has had no substantial Orthodox flock since the population exchanges of 1923. Zizioulas was a metropolitan of the Ecumenical Patriarchate without a diocese to govern in the ordinary sense — a status he shared with many hierarchs of the Patriarchate’s titular sees, and which left him free for the theological and diplomatic work that occupied the next thirty-seven years. He celebrated the Divine Liturgy in Pergamon itself in 2003 (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology”). There is an irony here that Zizioulas’ critics have not failed to note and that his defenders acknowledge: the theologian who taught more insistently than anyone else that the Church is constituted in the eucharistic assembly gathered around its bishop was himself a bishop of an assembly that no longer existed.

The Academy of Athens

Zizioulas was elected a member of the Academy of Athens in 1993 and became its president in 2002 — the first cleric, according to the Greek reports, to head the country’s highest learned institution (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Academy of Athens,” zizioulas.org; Greek News Agenda, “John Zizioulas, Elder Metropolitan of Pergamon”; “John Zizioulas,” Wikipedia, giving membership 1993 and chairmanship 2002). In 2000 he was appointed the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s representative in Greece (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology”).

He held honorary doctorates from a number of universities — the University of Belgrade honored him in 1991 — and the John Zizioulas Foundation reports that more than seventy doctoral dissertations worldwide have been written on his thought (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology” and “Brief Biographical Note,” zizioulas.org). That figure is the Foundation’s own and is reported here as such.

The Ecumenical and Conciliar Work

From 1978 Zizioulas was involved in the preparation of the official Orthodox–Roman Catholic theological dialogue, drawing up, on the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s behalf, its plan, method and agenda; he served on the coordinating committee, and became Orthodox co-president of the Joint International Commission in the mid-2000s, working opposite Cardinals Walter Kasper and Kurt Koch (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Orthodox–Roman Catholic Dialogue,” zizioulas.org). He was also co-chairman of the International Commission for Anglican–Orthodox Theological Dialogue from 1989 to 2007 (“John Zizioulas,” Wikipedia; The Living Church, obituary, 2023). And he presided over the pre-conciliar consultations at Chambésy that prepared the Holy and Great Council of Crete (2016), in which he took a leading part (John Zizioulas Foundation, “The Holy and Great Synod,” zizioulas.org). All of this is treated in Section 06.

Repose

Metropolitan John died in Athens on 2 February 2023, aged 92 — the feast of the Meeting of the Lord in the Temple (John Zizioulas Foundation, “Chronology”; Orthodox Times, “Elder Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon fell asleep in the Lord,” 2 February 2023; Ecumenical Patriarchate Permanent Delegation to the WCC, “In memoriam,” 27 February 2023). Several notices give COVID-19 as the cause (“John Zizioulas,” Wikipedia). He had by then held the title Elder Metropolitan (Gerontas) of Pergamon, a senior rank within the Ecumenical Patriarchate’s hierarchy.

See Also

References

  • Zizioulas, John D. Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries. Trans. Elizabeth Theokritoff. Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001. (Supervision by Florovsky, Williams and Stendahl noted in the front matter.)
  • Zizioulas, John D. Lectures in Christian Dogmatics. Ed. Douglas H. Knight. London: T&T Clark, 2008. (Publisher’s note listing the universities and years: Edinburgh 1970–1973, Glasgow 1973–1987, King’s College London 1984 and 1989–1998, Thessalonica 1984–1998.)
  • John Zizioulas Foundation. “Chronology,” “Brief Biographical Note,” “Academy of Athens,” “London,” “Orthodox–Roman Catholic Dialogue,” “The Holy and Great Synod.” zizioulas.org (accessed 2026).
  • “John (Zizioulas) of Pergamon.” OrthodoxWiki (used to locate dates; consecration 22 June 1986).
  • Ecumenical Patriarchate Permanent Delegation to the World Council of Churches. “In memoriam Metropolitan Elder John of Pergamon (1931–2023).” ecupatria.org, 27 February 2023.
  • Orthodox Times. “Elder Metropolitan John Zizioulas of Pergamon fell asleep in the Lord.” orthodoxtimes.com, 2 February 2023.
  • The Living Church. “Metropolitan John Zizioulas, 1931–2023.” livingchurch.org, 2023. (Anglican–Orthodox dialogue co-chairmanship 1989–2007.)
  • Asproulis, Nikolaos. “T. F. Torrance and John Zizioulas on the Divine Monarchia.” Participatio 4 (2013): 162–189. (The Edinburgh connection and the trinitarian comparison.)
  • Louth, Andrew. Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Present. London: SPCK, 2015.
  • Ladouceur, Paul. Modern Orthodox Theology. London: T&T Clark, 2019.
  • Greek News Agenda. “John Zizioulas, Elder Metropolitan of Pergamon: one of the greatest Christian theologians of the 20th century.” greeknewsagenda.gr. (Academy of Athens membership 1993, presidency 2002.)