Page 98 - Orthodoxy Zizioulas

O r t h o d o x y
The Real Problem of Existence
Existence is constantly threatened by death. To say that the
world is created—that there was a time when it was not—
does not simply mean that it might not have existed. It also
means that it may, at any moment, cease to exist. Non-being,
from which creation has emerged, is not eliminated by the fact
of existence. It remains ever present, silently accompanying
and permeating all that is.
For this reason, as St. Athanasius teaches, the very nature
of the created is mortal.
We must be clear: there is no inherent power within cre-
ation that guarantees its continued existence. Any notion that
creation contains within itself an internal impulse, an entele-
chy, or a God-given mechanism ensuring its permanence is
foreign to the patristic vision. Such ideas—often borrowed
from Aristotelian categories—ultimately undermine the radi-
cal distinction between created and uncreated. They imply
that creation possesses, even if derivatively, the capacity to
sustain itself.
But this is precisely what the Fathers reject. Creation has
no such power. It cannot exist by itself. To suggest otherwise
is to blur the boundary between creation and God, and to
introduce a form of “created grace” that compromises the very
meaning of createdness.
No—the created, by its very nature, does not possess the
means of its own survival. In this sense, Heidegger’s descrip-
tion of human existence as “being-unto-death” captures some-
98