Back to The Gods index
Previous poem

A CRITIQUE OF JOHN ZIZIOULAS'S BOOK, BEING AS COMMUNION

Solitude - Zizioulas
seems to say - the breaking
of communion - is the first
sin, and certainly
it is open to
a desperation, yet
there is an intensity there,
unknown to the happy families
or perhaps
smothered in the laughter,
in the tensions, in the quarrels
- intensity of questioning
"Why am I here?" and of Whom
do we ask this question?
Oh, Zizioulas would answer
'Being is Communion', we
are as we are known
but I know that I know
no-one - and is the eating
of the Body and Blood of God really
an opening up
of all those other universes,
a tension towards
an eventual
union of all?

Oh, this stretching out, this
longing of the star
to light the sky.

The one (me)
is an intensity
that can break, that has to be
a tension towards
infinity, but we
believe in a
metaphysically impossible (René
Guénon dixit) three
infinities
and each of those infinities
is other than me,
of a different essence and of three
different substances
and here I assert,
the substance - the 'hypostasis' -
IS the substance,
the 'person' is a mask -
a mask that reveals, certainly
but a mask still,
as beautiful
and incomprehensible
as the people I meet
when I walk down the street.

[René Guénon's La Métaphysique orientale argues that there can only be one infinity - as if an infinity necessarily occupies space. Here and in my poem Is an animal an hypostasis? I was preoccupied with the difference between the Western formula for the Trinity - One Substance, three Persons and the Eastern formula - One Essence, three Substances (hypostases). Although both are recognised as 'Orthodox' it does not seem to me that they convey the same meaning and I don't think that when the Eastern formula is under discussion 'Person' should be used as a translation of 'hyspostasis']

                                                       Next poem - Being as Communion (2)