Identity Without Enmity

On the Metaphysical Intention of John Zizioulas’s “Logic of Identity” Notes

Abstract

This essay reconstructs the metaphysical intention of John D. Zizioulas’s unpublished notes, The Logic of Identity. Although the manuscript’s formal reasoning is not always valid, it identifies a significant problem: identity cannot be grounded solely in self-sameness or in the negation of another. In Trinitarian theology, the divine persons are distinguished through positive relations that establish both otherness and communion. The notes therefore suggest a relational ontology in which the other is not a threat to identity but a condition of it.