Chapter 1 of this book, an edited volume comprised of Zizioulas’ various lectures on Christian dogmatics, seeks to explicate the nature of Christian doctrine. It divides neatly into two dominant sections, with (1) exploring the relationship between the formation of doctrine & the church, and (2) looking at the epistemological issues surrounding the knowledge of God. This post will summarily unpack (1).
In (1), Zizioulas argues that theology issues from the worship of God & in the Church’s experience of communion with God. Thus, theology “sets out the teaching of the church (1).” In order to interpret the teaching of the church, one must attempt to understand both the original context of the bible and the teaching of the church and contemporary situation, an engagement that takes place on several levels of inquiry. Zizioulas argues that we must seek to relate the doctrines of the church to the most pressing issues today.
This does not mean that society can manipulate the church’s doctrines for its own ends, because the authority of doctrine is grounded in the church. Thus, preaching is truly doctrinal only when the experience of the worshipping community endorses it. While acknowledging the normative character of the New Testament, grounded in the experience of it’s authors physical communion with God, “it is the task of the church to judge how to understand the teaching it has received in Scripture and doctrine and set it out in each new situation (7).”
From this cursory overiew, it is evident that Zizioulas’ beliefs about the formation of doctrine is experiential, grounded in the authority of the worshipping community. Although exegesis and cultural analysis both are valid enterprises in the interpretation and application of doctrine, the ecclesial community serves to check any emerging individualism in these tasks. This is one obvious benefit Zizioulas offers in this initial section to our hyperindividualistic culture. Also, the experiential and doxological approach to doctrine seems more at home within a view of reality where act and being aren’t torn asunder; careful exegesis, cultural analysis, and worship do not exist on separate levels of reality, but are all faithful tasks carried out by the body of Christ.
Despite these benefits, it is worth asking: How can the body of Christ serve as the locus of authority rather than it’s “Head”: could this potentially imprison the knowledge & freedom of Christ within ecclesial traditions, despite the intent to interpret dogma with an eye on the times? Does the church have a complete monopoly on God? To better answer these questions, and to begin to peer more deeply into this model for forming doctrine, we must move onto (2), where Zizioulas unpacks how knowledge of God is possible more in depth.
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