Finally Zizioulas<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I finally finished reading Being as Communion by John Zizioulas yesterday. It has taken me forever because I've been attempting a close reading & I\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2008\/07\/finally-zizioulas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Finally Zizioulas\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I finally finished reading Being as Communion by John Zizioulas yesterday. It has taken me forever because I've been attempting a close reading & I\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2008\/07\/finally-zizioulas.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Paperback Theology\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:author\" content=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=654515438\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-07-16T08:26:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/3.bp.blogspot.com\/_4AE8Lh_8zxs\/SH4TmAt-wLI\/AAAAAAAAANA\/-_xSTS4FF8M\/s200\/being+as+communion.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Tim Suttle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@Tim_Suttle\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Tim Suttle\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2008\/07\/finally-zizioulas.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2008\/07\/finally-zizioulas.html\",\"name\":\"Finally Zizioulas\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-07-16T08:26:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2008-07-16T08:26:00+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/#\/schema\/person\/63a7ffe567a014f809abae15ebfc44a6\"},\"description\":\"I finally finished reading Being as Communion by John Zizioulas yesterday. 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{"id":349,"date":"2008-07-16T08:26:00","date_gmt":"2008-07-16T08:26:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2008\/07\/finally-zizioulas\/"},"modified":"2008-07-16T08:26:00","modified_gmt":"2008-07-16T08:26:00","slug":"finally-zizioulas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/paperbacktheology\/2008\/07\/finally-zizioulas.html","title":{"rendered":"Finally Zizioulas"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

$\"\"$ <\/a>I finally finished reading Being as Communion <\/a>by John Zizioulas yesterday. It has taken me forever because I\u2019ve been attempting a close reading & I kept getting distracted. It\u2019s a pretty amazing book; one which is often referred to as one of the most important Christian theology books of the last half century.<\/p>\n

I read something in Zizioulas yesterday which blew me away. He describes what he calls the \u201cdouble movement\u201d of the church.<\/p>\n

The baptismal movement<\/span><\/strong>:
\u201cwhich renders the church a community existentially \u2018dead to the world\u2019 and hence separated from it,\u201d on one hand.<\/span><\/p>\n

The Eucharistic movement:<\/span><\/strong>
\u201cwhich relates the world to God by \u2018referring\u2019 it to God\u2026an by bringing to it the blessings of God\u2019s life and the taste of the Kingdom to come.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve never thought of the two sacraments in quite that way before. Baptism leaves us dead to the world and we re-enter the world through the body of Christ, through the Eucharist and through Eucharistic community.<\/p>\n

I had a discussion with friends last night and one of the things we talked about was the nature of baptism in relation to our role as citizens of the United States. I think Zizioulas seems to point out that our baptism implies a renunciation of the primacy of all other associations over and against that primary association as the covenant people of God. Not that we renounce our citizenship in this country when we are baptized, but we become dead to its primacy at that point. Then we re-enter our state citizenship through the Eucharist, or more precisely, within Eucharistic community where we decide together as a people what covenant faithfulness looks like in our current day and time as citiziens of the United States. We bring our state citizenship to God together as a community and our citizenship is relativized by the primacy of God\u2019s covenant. The place where this happens in the Eucharist. This blows me away.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"