Page 355 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

T H E L AW A N D T H E H U M A N P E R S O N
The L aw and the Human Person
This understanding extends directly to the realm of law.
Theology and law do not coincide, yet their deeper and
creative encounter becomes helpful, if not necessary, for ful-
filling the debt both bear toward man, whom they both
serve. This encounter is especially necessary today, because
more and more the area of law is dealing with the concept of
personhood. The crucial question is whether society is to be
understood merely as a sum of self-defined individuals, or as
a communion of relations in which the absolute otherness of
each person is revealed and affirmed.
A society and culture based on personhood does not treat
the one as existing for the sake of the whole, nor the whole as
an ideological or moral unity to which individuals must con-
form. The “whole” is a unity based on the free relations of
persons, relations which not only respect but affirm the other-
ness, the absolute uniqueness, of each one. In such a commu-
nity, nobody is capable of being determined alone; all are de-
termined by others in relationships which do not abolish but
establish personal otherness. This is the law of personhood. It
is not founded on natural law alone, nor on the conventional
and utilitarian necessities of social organization, but on an
ontology of relations without which nothing could exist as
free, not even God Himself.
Modern constitutions speak broadly of “individual rights”
and “individual freedoms.” Yet this language usually presup-
poses an individualistic rather than a personalistic under-
standing of man. Rights were historically established in order
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