Page 73 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

W H AT I S T H E P E R S O N
What is the Person?
The Church derives the concept of the person from her
faith in the Triune God, and she articulates it through
Christology and Pneumatology. It is not a philosophical con-
struction, but a revelation received and lived.
In the Holy Trinity, the person is not a negative concept,
defined by separation or opposition, but a positive and affir-
mative reality. It is constituted as relationship. The three per-
sons of the Trinity are distinct from one another, not because
they are isolated or withdrawn into themselves, but precisely
because they are inseparably united. The more perfect the
unity, the more it gives rise to true diversity.
This inseparable communion is what guarantees fullness of
being. It excludes death and affirms life. In such a vision, the
other is not a threat, but the very confirmation of one’s own
identity. The “You” makes the “I” possible; without the “You,”
the “I” cannot exist or even be conceived.
According to the patristic teaching on the Trinity, the per-
sons can never be understood in isolation. Each exists only in
relation to the others. If one were removed, the others would
cease to be as well. The Father is Father because He has the
Son; the Son is Son because He is from the Father; and the
Spirit exists in relation to both. Identity itself is relational.
Furthermore, personal otherness in the Trinity is not
grounded in psychological traits or accidental characteristics,
but in ontology. The distinguishing properties of the divine
persons are not attributes added to a common substance; they
are modes of existence. Each person is who He is—irreducibly,
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