Page 67 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

H O LY T R I N I T Y: P E R S O N S O R I N D I V I D UA L S
vine persons. This elevates the person to the highest onto-
logical status.
Thus, unity and diversity are equally fundamental. The one
does not precede the many, nor do the many dissolve into the
one. The one God is the Father, who exists only in relation to
the Son and the Spirit. Being itself is constituted as commu-
nion.
In their treatment of the doctrine of the Trinity, the Cap-
padocian Fathers developed an ontology of paramount im-
portance. Тo understand being, we must ask not only what
something is, but how it exists.
The Fathers expressed this distinction clearly:
•
the what refers to essence or nature
•
the how refers to person—the mode of existence
And it is only at the level of the “how” that communion is
possible.
God’s essence remains beyond knowledge and beyond par-
ticipation. But God as person—as Father, Son, and Spirit—is
known and encountered in relationship. We do not know
what God is; we know how He is: as communion.
The Cappadocian Fathers went even further. They intro-
duced the idea that, at the level of personhood, being is not
static but dynamic. The Father is the “cause”—not in a tempo-
ral or mechanical sense, but as the source of relational exis-
tence. The Son and the Spirit receive their being as persons
through relationship with the Father.
This introduces movement, freedom, and love into ontol-
ogy itself. Being is not static, and beings are not self-explicable
but emerge from a constant movement of relationality.
Thus, relational ontology is, at its deepest level, an ontology
of love.
To be is not to exist for oneself, but for the other. Love is
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