Relational Ontology

Lewis Ayres is a skeptic and critic of recent efforts to formulate a Trinitarian relational ontology. These often fail to specify the meanings of basic terms – analogy, relation, person, especially analogy. Zizioulas in particular makes a theological mistake by making “person” more basic than the unity of the persons: “That which is fundamental,” Ayres writes, “is the union of the three irreducible persons constituted by the Father’s eternal begetting of the Son and breathing of the Spirit” (essay in Polkinghorne, ed., The Trinity and an Entangled World: Relationality in Physical Science and Theology , 133).

Given these criticisms, it’s important to add that Ayres closes by offering “ways in which we may and should envisage theologians exploring relationships between communion in the created order and the inner divine communion” (143).

He affirms that “the characteristics of the divine relationships certainly should provide material that should be of immense help in shaping our vision of the world” and that “the fundamental principles of Trinitarian theology itself will help in our exploration of the created structures that we believe in faith to mirror the divine” (143). He argues that the contexts where “the interdependence of the created order and our mode of intended participation within it are best explored by reflection on the unity, diversity, and love modeled by the Father, Son and Spirit” are those where “the divine-human relationship established by God enables progress in understanding of the intra-divine relationships” (144). He cites John 17:11 in this context, and notes that “in a number of places Augustine parallels the unity of the Trinity with the unity of the apostles described in Acts 4:32.” No surprise there, since Augustine connects the Spirit as the subsistent love of Father and Son with “an account of the church as that location in which the Spirit as gift and dove unites the wills and loves of Christians.”

In concluding, Ayres writes, “Created and temporal being is most certainly intended to reflect the divine existence and draw all into a communion that reflects that existence . . . . the reflection of divine existence in the created order is grasped when the anagogic nature of that reflection is grasped: the reflection is understood when the grasping is part of our move towards the Creator. And certainly, the temporality of the created order enables the endless advance into the mystery of God, mirroring eternity as a sacrament of the divine limitlessness. And yet, our advance into that vision is one shaped and honed by our participation in the (sacramental) life of the church, that is, by our life in the body of Christ” (145).

In the end he argues that there can be “a relational and a Trinitarian ontology” but only insofar as it is “governed by a theologically dense and Christololgically formed conception of our existence and ongoing sanctification.” To be truly theological, Trinitarian ontology must not only be what we image we can discover in the Trinity but “must be also both Christology and ecclesiology” (145).