Page 224 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
The importance of this lies less in the thesis itself than in the
direction it indicates. While not all Fathers avoided the pitfalls
of Hellenism—figures such as Origen and Justin Martyr reveal
certain philosophical excesses—their engagement with these
challenges and the methods they employed must again be-
come central.
This return to the Fathers is not a return to the past, nor a
form of fundamentalism that simply repeats their texts. Its
meaning is connected to two considerations.
First, the patristic period represents the common founda-
tion of the divided Church. Second, the return to the Fathers
can take place only within an ecumenical context, since the
patristic tradition is neither Eastern nor Western, but catholic
and ecumenical. Neither East nor West can claim the Fathers
as exclusive heritage.
For this reason, the return to the Fathers takes the form of
a neopatristic synthesis, requiring an ecumenical context for
its realization.
Such an orientation implies that Orthodox theology should
cease to be treated as a confessional theology. The implications
of this for ecumenical engagement will be considered later;
here it is enough to note it as a defining feature of the meth-
odology to which contemporary Orthodox theology is called.
The call to return to the Fathers arose as a response to a
long theological captivity, in which Orthodoxy had too often
borrowed foreign categories and forgotten her own living
sources.
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