John D. Zizioulas (1931-2023) was a modern theologian and Metropolitan of Pergamon, in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.
He was born in Greece, January 10, 1931. He began his studies at the University of Thessaloniki but received his undergraduate degree in theology from the University of Athens in 1955, where he also later received a degree of Doctor of Theology in 1965.
Metropolitan John’s education included a period of study under the Eastern Orthodox theologian Father Georges Florovsky at Harvard Divinity School. He received his M.T.S. at Harvard in 1956, and in the years 1960–1963, John Zizioulas was a fellow of the Harvard Foundation for Byzantine Studies, the Dumbarton Oaks. He received a doctorate in theology from the University of Athens in 1965. His doctoral thesis on the bishop in the early Church was published in English as Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001).
He worked in the Secretariat of Faith and Order as a young lay theologian from 1968 to 1970. Soon after that, he taught theology at the University of Edinburgh (1970-1973), before becoming Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Glasgow, where he held a personal chair in systematic theology for some fourteen years (1973–1987). In addition, he went on to be Visiting Professor at the University of Geneva, King’s College London (during 1984, and then 1989–1998), and the Gregorian University, Rome (1984). He was also a part-time professor at the University of Thessaloniki (1984–1998).
His book, Being as Communion (1985), has been highly influential among Western scholars seeking to recover a view of Christian community as more than a conglomeration of individuals. His work is often considered a paradigmatic example of relational anthropology in theology. At the heart of his theology is ecclesiology, but his ecclesiology rests primarily on an ontology of the person, which is derived from his deep reflection on the nature of the Trinity.
He was consecrated as a bishop on June 22, 1986, and named Metropolitan of Pergamon. He has represented the Ecumenical Patriarchate on international Church bodies for many years. Metropolitan John was a member of the committees for dialogue with the Roman Catholic Church, and with the Anglican Church, and was Secretary of Faith and Order at the World Council of Churches in Geneva, where he gradually came to be recognized as one of the most influential Orthodox theologians of our times. A major contribution was his role as president of Pan-Orthodox Pre-Conciliar consultations held in Chambésy (Geneva) as preparation for the Holy and Great Council which convened in Crete in 2016.
He also has played a major role in promoting Orthodox involvement in environmental issues.
His ecumenical involvement has led him to publish a number of articles and studies in various periodicals. Some of his books are L’Être ecclésial (Paris: Labor et Fides, 1981), Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1985), Eucharist, Bishop, Church: The Unity of the Church in the Divine Eucharist and the Bishop During the First Three Centuries (Brookline, MA: Holy Cross Orthodox Press, 2001), Communion and Otherness (London: T&T Clark, 2006), Lectures in Christian Dogmatics (London: T&T Clark, 2009), The One and the Many (Los Angeles: Sebastian Press 2011), The Eucharistic Communion and the World (London: Τ&Τ Clark, 2011).
His yet-to-be-seen magnum opus on eschatology, finished before his death, Remembering the Future: Toward an Eschatological Ontology, was published posthumously in 2023.
He holds honorary doctorates from the Institut Catholique of Paris, the Orthodox Theological Faculty of the University of Belgrade, the St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute of Paris, Munster, Georgia, etc.
His writings have been translated into many languages (English, French, German, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Italian, Serbian, Arabic, Chinese, and other), while more than 70 doctoral dissertations have been devoted to the study of his work in renown Universities, such as Oxford, Paris, Louvain, Tubingen, Edinburgh, London, Rome, Chicago, Belgrade, Boston, and others.
