Page 154 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
Yet this diversity does not fragment the Body. No member
can say to another, “I have no need of you.” There is an absolute
interdependence among all. Otherness is not a threat—it is the
very condition of communion. Indeed, otherness is the essence
of ministry itself.
At the same time, diversity must always lead to unity. When
difference (diaphora) becomes division (diairesis), to use the
language of Maximus the Confessor, the Church falls into the
brokenness of the world. Communion is not the abolition of
difference, but its transfiguration.
For this reason, the Church requires a ministry of unity—
one that safeguards communion without suppressing diversity.
This ministry is embodied in the bishop. The bishop is not an
external authority imposed upon the community, but the per-
sonal center of its unity, one who gathers the many into one
without erasing their distinctiveness.
Hence, there is no Church without a bishop, and there is
only one bishop in each local Church, as affirmed by the First
Council of Nicaea. The multiplication of bishops within the
same community risks transforming diversity into division. In
this light, situations in which ecclesial unity is fractured along
cultural or ethnic lines represent not a richness of diversity, but
a distortion of communion.
The structure of the Church must therefore hold together
two inseparable realities: unity and diversity.
Unity means that no member is dispensable. Diversity
means that no member is identical to another. Each person,
each gift, each ministry is indispensable precisely because it is
unique.
This diversity embraces all dimensions of human exis-
tence—natural, social, and spiritual. Differences of race, sex,
and age are not obstacles to communion, but elements within
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