Page 133 - Prayer Book

Ι Heard You…
133
When I returned to Greece, I met with my spiritual
father again and confessed, “Now I have enemies!”
His wise, fatherly advice was to forgive them …
Easier said than done!
The Theology of the Person: The Cappadocians,
Maximus the Confessor, and Metropolitan John
of Pergamon
These prayers are also inspired by the theology of the
person as taught by the late Metropolitan John Zizioulas
of Pergamon. The theology of the person is not a new or
modern innovation, but rather a theology deeply root-
ed in Holy Scripture and the Tradition of our Church.
Specifically, in the Tradition of Patristic theology, Met-
ropolitan John bases his thoughts on the theology of the
Cappadocian Fathers (Basil the Great, Gregory the Theo-
logian, and Gregory of Nyssa), as well as on the theology
of Saint Maximus the Confessor.
But what is the “theology of the person” according to
these Great Fathers of the Church? In their effort to articu-
late their experience of the uniqueness and Trinitarian na-
ture of God, the Cappadocian Fathers used the terms “es-
sence” (ousia)—“nature” (physis) and “person” (prosopon)—
“hypostasis.”
The Holy Fathers stated that God is three persons (or
hypostases) with one unique, indivisible essence (or na-
ture). This theology of the Cappadocians was affirmed by
the Second Ecumenical Council in 381 A.D. in Nicaea, Asia
Minor. Later, the Fourth Ecumenical Council in 451 in
Constantinople, Saint Maximus the Confessor (580-662),
and the Sixth Ecumenical Council in 681, used the terms