Thomas Ruston

Throughout his retirement, John Hick, the Philosopher of Religious Pluralism, collated a collection of papers in his home office, which had built up over the course of his career. Until now, the contents of this collection remained unknown. The collection totals 40 boxes of material and has been donated by the Hick family to the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham.1 It is a remarkable collection, which contains a lifetime’s work, including: unpublished manuscripts, journal articles, lectures, interviews on VHS and DVD, sermons, and diaries which he kept during his work with the Community Race Relations Committee, and SACRE (Standing Advisory Council on Religious Education). Of particular interest have been the correspondences Hick has kept with his former colleagues, interlocutors, critiques as well as other notable figures. Some of these correspondences include letters written, to use Hick’s own words, in ‘almost undecipherable’2 handwriting from Norman Kemp Smith, Donald MacKinnon, and Ramu Gandhi. Further letters are from other key figures in Hick’s life, including: T. E. Jessop, H. H. Farmer, H. H. Price, Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Peter Heath, and Paul Knitter. There are other letters from some notable figures such as: John A. T. Robinson, Karen Armstrong, and Desmond Tutu. A few of the letters contain quite a fierce exchange, noting in particular those between Hick and Antony Flew, Don Cupitt, Charles Hartshorne, and the then Cardinal Ratzinger. The John Hick Estate and the Spalding Trust have generously funded my research into the archived papers.

In this paper, I have challenged the consensus that Zizioulas is a Social Trinitarian. My thesis has made quite a simple point that I believe what Zizioulas seeks to achieve in his eucharistic ecclesiology is different from social trinitarianism. The question I would like to consider in this talk is, ‘why is it important to distinguish between Zizioulas’ eucharistic ecclesiology and social trinitarianism?’

During the 1980s and 1990s it was common to juxtapose a supposedly Patristic retrieval of a ‘social-trinity’ as opposed to a Latin and Augustinian ‘substantial trinity’- a juxtaposition known as the de Régnon paradigm. This social trinity was used to reconceive personal, human and ecclesial relationships along more egalitarian and relational lines- perichoresis was the operative term. It inspired a great outpouring of ethical and ecclesiological work. As Kathryn Tanner explains:

‘When contemporary theologians want to form judgements about social and political matters they often turn immediately to the trinity for guidance. Rather than Christology, a theology of the trinity is enlisted to support particular kinds of human community- say, egalitarian, inclusive, communities, in which differences are respected- or to counter modern individualism by greater regard for the way personal character is shaped in community’

Miroslav Volf, Colin Gunton and Paul Fiddes are prominent examples of theologians who postulate a social-analogy of the trinity to justify an egalitarian free-Church ecclesiology. All of whom have turned to Zizioulas for a Cappadocian conception of the trinity. This paper examines Stephen Holmes' argument which seeks to abrogate a social trinity on the basis of delineating the problems related to projecting a trinitarian schesis onto ecclesiology. His premise is that Zizioulas and Miroslav Volf are social trinitarians; and although they share a methodology rooted in trinitarian analogy they derive widely different ecclesiologies from the trinitarian communion. Namely, that in the ecclesiology of John Zizioulas the Bishop is a projection of the monarchy of the Father. Whereas the ecclesiology of Miroslav Volf justifies an egalitarian ecclesiology based on the mutuality of the triune persons. Thus, there is a fundamental flaw in the social trinitarian method if the doctrine of the trinity produces different ecclesiologies. However, whilst sharing Holmes' concerns about social trinitarian projection, this paper argues that Zizioulas does not postulate a social trintiarian methodology based on analogy. Instead, Zizioulas argues for theosis on the basis of participation in the person of Christ, and this participation is the foundation for his ecclesiology in dialogue with the historical commitment to apolostic succession in the episcopacy.

Since the publication of Zizioulas' seminal text, Being as Communion (1985), succesive theologians have turned to his work to postulate a social-trinity. The past decade has witnessed a significant repudiation of social-trinitarianism, but such criticism has an implicit tendency to identify Zizioulas as a social-trintiarian. My paper shall consider Zizioulas' ecclesiology in relation to its reception by social-trinitarianism, and ask whether both his social-trinitarian advocates, and their critics, do justice to the problems considered by Zizioulas. Whilst acknowledging that there are significant similarities in their initial engagement, and recognising the limitations of Zizioulas' project, this paper shall maintain that Zizioulas is not ultimately a social-trinitarian because his social-trinitarian advocates are posing different questions to the relationship between the Trinity and the Church than posed by Zizioulas. Although the social-trinitarians draw from Zizioulas' work they do so to answer their own questions, which they resolve by projecting a revised trinitarian schesis, rooted in perichoresis, onto ecclesial and social structures. By attending to the nature of Zizioulas' ecclesiological questions, I shall make the case that Zizioulas exhibits a logic of question and answer that belongs to the neopatristic synthesis which emerged in Orthodox theology in the twentieth century. Zizioulas relates the Trinity to the Church on the basis of theosis as Christification. Consequently, Zizioulas and the social-trinitarians operate within different logical complexes.

In 2024 I delivered a talk on the eucharist for the Society of Catholic Priests in the Church of England. This talk considers how the modern Orthodox theologian John Zizioulas conceives of the Eucharist as both a participation in the Eschaton, which he defines as divine human communion, and a participation in the person of Christ in the Spirit. I ask what Anglicanism can learn from this perspective on the Eucharist.

Robert Crouse is a noted Patristic and Medieval scholar, and a teacher and priest in the Anglican Church of Canada. Through his committment to the texts of our spiritual and intellectual tradition, Father Crouse has instilled a deep love of learning in generations of students. He is also a noted priest and spiritual guide, a bulwark of orthodox faith, and has even been described as "the conscience of the Canadian Church". His passion is the poet/ theologian Dante Alighieri (1265-1321). This book is a collection of his Sermons.