Eucharistic Communion and the World

As I have noted before, nobody today can consider himself educated in theology without knowing the works of John Zizioulas, universally recognized as the most influential and important Greek Orthodox thinker of our time and author, most famously, of Being as Communion: Studies in Personhood and the Church as well, more recently, as Communion and Otherness: Further Studies in Personhood and the Church. Both are dense books, and so I have used with my students his Lectures in Christian Dogmatics, which is a fine introductory text that distills much of the wisdom of those other two books.

In the coming months we will have two substantial works from him. The first, to appear in August, is John Zizioulas, Eucharistic Communion and the World, ed. Luke Ben Tallon  (T&T Clark, 2011), 208pp.

About this book, the publisher provides us a good overview and then the table of contents:

The theology of John Zizioulas presents a beautiful vision of the Church as Eucharistic communion, in which human persons both are gathered into Jesus Christ and are sent back into the world. In his previous books, Zizioulas focused on the way this communion is related to the communion of Father, Son and Holy Spirit, which calls us to understand being as communion and provides the only foundation for otherness and identity. With its sustained attention directly to the Eucharistic communion, this volume provides the context for those discussions. Zizioulas here explores the biblical dimensions and eschatological foundation of the Eucharist, the celebration of the Eucharist by the Church, and the ethos of the Eucharistic community. These essays are provocatively concrete and practical, showing once again that Zizioulas’ teaching on persons, communion and otherness has radical implications for the life of the Church and its relationship to the world.

Table of Contents

Chapter One: Biblical Aspects of the Eucharist\Chapter Two: The Eucharist and The Kingdom of God\Chapter Three: Symbolism and Realism in Orthodox Worship\Chapter Four: The Ecclesiological Presuppositions of the Holy Eucharist\Chapter Five: Reflections on Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist\Chapter Six:: The Eucharistic Vision of the World\Chapter Seven: Proprietors or Priests of Creation?\Chapter Eight: Preserving God's Creation

A book by Zizioulas in the world of Eastern Christian studies is not so much a book as a publishing event, and so we will give prominent attention to this on here and in Logos: A Journal of Eastern Christian Studies.