The need to purify Orthodox Dogmatics from various Western influences, which it suffered from the Middle Ages onwards, was pointed out and underlined during the first conference of the Orthodox Theological Schools in Athens in 1936. During this conference, whose Proceedings are still a valuable source for Orthodox Theology, Zizioulas’ late teacher Professor Georges Florovsky demonstrated that the so-called “Orthodox Confessions,” which appeared in the 17th century, are significantly influenced by way of approaching doctrinal issues, which had been established in the West by Scholasticism, and which determined the whole way of approaching the theological problems in the dispute between Roman Catholics and Protestants after the Reformation. This approach was characterized by the consideration of doctrines as logical propositions, which, completely isolated from the ecclesiastical context, in which the fact of faith is realized, and the doctrinal teaching is determined, are addressed mainly to the intellectual conception of man, and ignore the wider existential dimensions of the truth.

These characteristics of Orthodox Dogmatics, which are under the influence of Scholastic methodology, can be seen in the classic Orthodox Dogmatics of recent times, such as those of Ch. Androutsos and P. Trembelas in Greece, and Makarios of Moscow in Russia, of the last century. An attempt to unhook from these influences can be seen in the works of the late academician J. Karmiris and J. Romanidis. In the work of the former, a successful attempt is made to use the Fathers, but the framework and structure in the Dogmatics remain those of Androutsos and Trembelas. In J. Romanidis, on the other hand, the experiential approach to the doctrine is introduced but without decisive reference to its ecclesiastical-social character.

Zizioulas' contribution to methodology consists in placing Dogmatic theology on three foundations, which, we believe, distance it from Western Scholastic methodology and returns it to the ancient Patristic ethos.

a) The use of ecclesiology as a starting point and basic framework of Orthodox Dogmatics. Dogmas are ecclesiastical events that spring from the communal reality of the Christian experience and are shaped within it. Ecclesiology is not, therefore, as is the case in other Dogmatics, just a chapter of Dogmatics, but the ground in which faith and dogma are cultivated.

b) The search for the philosophical dimensions and consequences of doctrines. The ecclesiological background of the faith does not mean that we are dealing simply with an institution called “Church” but with a “way of being.” The essence of the Church is that it expresses a way of relating man to God, other people, and the world. The doctrines aim to confirm and demonstrate the importance of the Christian faith for the being of man and the world. For this reason, Dogmatics as a systematic theology is in a close relationship with ontology, with issues that touch the limit and absolute states of the world and human consciousness, such as being and non-being, life and death, freedom and slavery, good and evil as existential, ontological categories, etc. The doctrines, therefore, derive their authority and the obligation of their acceptance not from a “dogmatism” of legal-ecclesiastical form but from their ontological content. Dogmatic theology, consequently, is in a direct relationship with philosophy, as it mainly developed in ancient Hellenism, which from the Pre-Socratic philosophers, was already concerned with being and non-being, that is, with the ontological question.

c) For precisely these reasons, John Zizioulas proposed and applied the hermeneutical approach to dogmas in his studies as a systematic method of dogmatic theology. Until him, the Dogmatics has been limited, as a rule to the exposition of the doctrines, as they were formulated in the past by the Ecumenical Councils and the Fathers. Thus, Dogmatics ceases to differ essentially from the History of Dogmas. But the doctrines themselves and the Fathers were never limited to repeating previous doctrines—they always interpreted the old doctrines in terms of their time (cf. the term “homoousios”). According to Zizioulas, Dogmatics must interpret the doctrines not only philologically (with the grammatical analysis of the texts) but mainly philosophically and even ontologically, with the search and projection of their ontological content, in constant reference to the philosophical concerns of each era. This method proves that Dogmatic is indeed a “systematic” theology and connects it with the other areas of knowledge and existence. This method characterizes the entire effort of Zizioulas’ work.