Trinity: Tom McCall Critiques Zizoulas as Tom Torrance Critiques the Cappadocians

In Tom McCall's critique of Eastern Orthodox and Trinitarian theologian, John Zizoulas; McCall offers a proposal that is highly similar (if not self-same) with that of Thomas F. Torrance's. McCall is appreciative of Zizoulas' emphasis on Being-As-Communion as definitive for how we should conceive of the divine Monarchia or God-head, but like Torrance, contra the Cappadocians; McCall finds concern with Zizoulas' retrieval, as it were of the Cappadocian grounding of the God-head in the Person's, or Person (the Father), instead of the Being of God (ousia) which is given shape by the mutual in-dwelling, subject-in-being kind of onto-relating (as Torrance calls it) that as Torrance has highlighted someone like Epiphanius or Athanasius has offered in the Patristic Tradition. McCall sketches, and develops what is called the Sovereign Aseity Conviction, which is the belief that God alone gives himself his own being. McCall is worried that when this reality is correlated with Zizoulas' belief that 'Being-As-Communion' is understood as definitive for God, and further, when the conception of Sovereign Aseity is grounded in the Person of the Father, rather than an actual Being that is indeed in communion; that we end up with a non sequitur (and I share his worry). For if the definition of God-ness is indeed given primary shape by BAC, then to posit (as Zizoulas does) that there is principle of God-ness, such as Father, prior to the possibility for genuine communion to inhere; then we end up with a non-starting conception of God-ness if this conception is going to be defined by being-in-communion. [There is further discussion needed to parse this out further, and McCall provides it; discussion on person-hood in the Monarchia etc. But I am not going to provide that here, at the moment---maybe in the comments if someone wants. I am highlighting McCall's critique of Zizoulas here because it sounds very very similar to Thomas Torrance's critique of the Cappadocians in his book Trinitarian Faith]. Here is McCall on Zizoulas, and McCall's counter-proposal to Zizoulas:

[T]he first adjustment [to Zizoulas' view] is this: the SAC [Sovereign Aseity Conviction] must be seen as a property of the triune God rather than as a property of the Father alone. As we have seen, to predicate the SAC of the Father alone is to raise several concerns, not least of which is whether this means that the Father is of a different essence than is the Son or Spirit. To assert that the Father alone is unthrown and a se is to say that the Father has different essential properties than does the Son or Spirit --- properties that are not either accidental properties (after all, this seems to be what it means to be the Father) or "onto-relational" properties. But to predicate the SAC of the Trinity alleviates this problem; it makes the SAC an essential property of divinity, one that is had by each and all of the divine persons. Furthermore, the ascription of the SAC to God is the way the biblical writers think of it (e.g., Exod. 3:14). [Thomas H. McCall, Which Trinity? Whose Monotheism?, 207]

I agree with McCall's call for an adjustment relative to Zizoulas' conceiving of things; just as I agree with Thomas Torrance's call for a dependence on Athanasius, Epiphanius, Didymus the Blind, et alia in contrast to the Cappadocians. A contrast that sees the importance of grounding God's being-in-communion in the Sovereign-Aseity of all the Persons mutual-indwellment of the other; instead of annexing this to the person of the Father alone (which would be contradictory because of prior conflict given the defined premises).

Anyway, besides the important theology being noted here; it makes me wonder how much McCall has depended on Thomas Torrance's proposal, contra the Cappadocians, for his (McCall's) own proposal contra Zizoulas? Let me close with a quote from Torrance, quoting Epiphanius, in Torrance's 'Trinitarian Faith':

[G]od is one, the Father in the Son, the Son in the Father with the Holy Spirit . . . true enhypostatic Father, and true enhypostatic Son, and true enhypostatic Holy Spirit, three Persons, one Godhead, one being, one glory, one God. In thinking of God you conceive of the Trinity, but without confusing in your mind the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The Father is the Father, the Son is the Son, the Holy Spirit is the Holy Spirit, but there is no deviation in the Trinity from oneness and identity. (Epiphanius, “Anc., 10,” cited by T. F. Torrance, “The Trinitarian Faith,” 234-35)