Page 394 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
human being, often standing amid the collapse of inherited
religious forms, dares to speak of “the death of God.” The
Church cannot simply dismiss this as blasphemy. She must
hear in it the echo of a deeper anxiety—the protest against a
God reduced to an idea, an idol, or a projection of human
need.In this sense, such language may reveal not only rejec-
tion, but also a hidden longing for the true God.
When we speak, therefore, about “the death of God,” we are
pointing to the limits and the end of religion understood as a
human construction. The religious version of the Church can
become either a narcissistic introversion into a glorious past
or a sterile and uncompromising “spirituality” devoid of the
joy of the Resurrection and the hope of the eschaton. In such
cases, instead of transforming human life, it risks deforming
it.
In the Orthodox tradition, however, “the death of God”
acquires a radically different meaning. It is not the negation of
divine life, but its ultimate revelation: God dies so that human-
ity may truly live. The Cross becomes the beginning of true
human existence. Therefore, the final word is not death, but
resurrection. For this reason, the Church, grounded in the
Resurrection of Christ, is oriented not toward the past but
toward the future—toward the eschaton of the Kingdom,
where death no longer reigns, not even as the silent destroyer
of relationships.
The Church thus transcends both physical and religious
individualism. She exists only as communion. If as persons we
do not enter into relationship with God and with one another,
the Church is not constituted.
For this reason, we must speak of the Church anew—free-
ing her reality from the many foreign accretions that have,
over time, obscured her identity and distorted her purpose.
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