The past several years have witnessed the remarkable recovery of participatory ontologies, a key conceptual element of the Platonic tradition. This recovery has occurred in many contexts, including Anglican, Evangelical, Reformed, and Roman Catholic circles. Participation constitutes a radically non-dualistic way of conceptualizing the relationship between God and creation, transcendence and immanence, the One in the many. It represents a theological and philosophical resource with a pedigree over 2,000 years old. Its implications range from the theological (soteriology and Christology), the philosophical (dualism, materialism), and the practical (aesthetics, environmental ethics). This invited panel will explore the motivations and implications of this recovery and is convened on the publication of Participation in the Divine (eds. Hedley, Tolan). Participants: Hans Boersma (Nashotah House Seminary), Andrew Davison (University of Cambridge), Yonghua Ge (Trinity Western University).
Recent interest in the metaphysics of participation (and in Platonism more widely), and burgeoning scholarship on that theme, is a notable feature of current evangelicalism, not least in North America. I will argue that this should be understood as both the fruit ecumenism and a driver for further ecumenism, and that while it is focused on doctrine or systematic theology, it cannot fully be appreciated if seen as isolated from spirituality, mission / apologetics, and the recovery of a historical sensibility. I will argue that this attention to Christian Platonism should not be seen primarily as one turn to philosophy among many – one which happens to be Platonist – but that the character of the particular philosophical vision is central. I will conclude by asking what the interest in participatory metaphysics among evangelicals might offer for conversations with other religious traditions.
In Aristotle’s view, nothing comes from nothing (ex nihilo nihil fit). Both he and Plotinus thought, therefore, of the substratum (ὑποκείμενον) of matter as being eternal. Christian theology has consistently rejected this understanding of material causality through its teaching of creation out of nothing (ex nihilo). Theologians have parted ways, however, on how to understand the creator-creature relationship once eternal matter is rejected. The Augustinian-Thomist approach has rejected creation from God (de deo). This paper draws attention to an alternative tradition, that of Irenaeus, Gregory of Nyssa, and Maximus the Confessor, which thinks of creation as both out of nothing (ἐκ τοῦ μή) and out of God (ἐκ θεοῦ). This paper argues that a genuinely participatory metaphysic requires the combination of creation ex nihilo and ex deo.
The (post)modern world oscillates between radical monism and pluralism. On the one hand, various forms of scientism claim that science alone is sufficient for explaining everything, while reductionist physicalism seeks to reduce all of reality into nothing but matter. But in its effort to unify all things with a single principle, these kinds of monism are destructive to the irreducible richness and complexity of reality. On the other hand, with its extreme emphasis on difference and otherness, postmodern thought has celebrated diversity at the expense of unity. In this paper, I will argue that participatory ontology provides a balanced worldview in which all of reality is unified by an absolutely transcendent source that nonetheless respects difference and diversity.