Ordination as Metamorphosis Pt. 2

Feeling particularly festive today, I thought I would write a Christmas song about our last post:

In the last post on being my true love gave to me,

Seven headaches

Six images

FIIIIIVE arguments about ontology

Four footnotes

Three Hypostasis

Two terms for being

And a saint punching Arius in the head

Merry Christmas!  Perhaps the song makes the last post sound more fun than it really was…  If you found it to be a little too ethereal, I promise this one will be particularly relevant to YOU (yes you).

The very simple point that I was trying to make was: The Cappadocian’s argued that being is not rooted in substance (what a being is).  Being is rooted in personhood (how a being relates).  To talk about your being, we should talk about your person, the multiple ways you relate!  See how simple that was?

Recall for a moment the insights of my brother-in-law who reflected on being a father as he began to relate to his family.  Fatherhood, in the story, involved function, and ontology.[1]  As soon as the firstborn came, he had a radically new function.  He had to do all those things that are required to keep a little baby alive.  Can we say that Fatherhood is reducible to only what the person does?  Richard is a Father only as much as he does what a Father should do? I wouldn’t think so.  Fatherhood is also who a person is.  Even when a Father doesn’t function as a Father (sadly we have far too many examples of this), a Father is always a Father.  Fatherhood involves a change in being.  My brother showed that he became a Father as he interacted with his son; as he related to his family.  The change in being didn’t occur on the level of substance (Richard’s substance wasn’t changed into a Father).  The change in being occurred on the level of personhood. Remember what we said last time: “In the Trinity, there is no personhood without relationship.  There is no being without relationship.”

This tension between function and being takes place in conversations about ministry.  Some religious traditions insist that their pastor is no different than anyone else in the congregation.  The pastor simply takes on a new role in the community.  She now preaches, leads ministries, counsels, celebrates sacraments, etc. Who is the minister?  The one who does these certain things.  Other traditions (Orthodox and Catholic) insist that the pastor not only has a new function, but is a different being.   A pastor receives a mark on his soul forever conforming him to Christ, the priest. Who is the minister? The one who IS a priest.  In this dichotomy, both sides have some drawbacks.  The functional side succeeds in keeping the pastor in relationship to the community.  You can’t function as a pastor without a church!  But it also fails to recognize the shift in identity brought about in a pastor.  The “ontological” side succeeds in understanding the transformation of the individual through the grace of the Holy Spirit.  But it tends to individualize and isolate the ordained person.  A priest is a priest with or without the church community.  This tends toward a “divinization” or at least a “reverence” for the priest who is perceived as altogether different than the normal member of the church.

The pastor is given a new role or function within the community.  In this model, the pastor could return to the community, and a new pastor could be selected.

The priest is ordained by the grace of the Holy Spirit.  The priest experiences a change in being, and then is given a specific church to minister with.

A theologian named Edward Hahnenberg has tried to overcome this dichotomy between function and ontology by looking at the Cappadocian understanding of being.  He says that when a person becomes involved in a ministry within a community, her relationships with others and the ecclesial community shift.  If being is rooted in personhood, these changing ecclesial relationships mark a change in being for any minister.  Using this Trinitarian, relational perspective Hahnenberg overcomes the dichotomy between function and ontology.  Ministers are not identified in isolation as individuals, nor are they identified solely by what they do. “[…] important ministers come to be both through what they do and who they are within a community.”^[2]

Hahnenberg uses the language of “ecclesial repositioning” to describe the changing relationship within the community.  The ontological change that occurs in a minister is directly related to one’s ecclesial position.  The ecclesial position consists of three facets: the commitment of the individual, the recognition of the community, and the ministry one is involved in.^[3]  The difference between an ordained priest and a lay youth minister is a difference of ecclesial position.  The commitment, ministry, and church recognition are different for each.  However, both experience a change in being because of a change in ecclesial relationships.  Viewed this way, priestly ordination is not about the power one possesses, or a beautiful mark on the soul.  The sacramental character of ordination becomes one’s ecclesial position.  “The laying on of hands and prayer at ordination mark the climactic moment of a process of recognition and repositioning in which the new minister is transformed through her or his relationships of service within and on behalf of the community.”^[4]

Taken from "Ministries: A Relational Approach" page 131.

According to this relational model, a minister experiences a change in being because a minister’s relationship to the church shifts.  This model does not require that a minister has a change in substance, only a change in person.  This is a bridge between function and ontology because the minister’s being is rooted in the relationships the minister finds him/herself in.  The relationships involve roles and function, and makes up who the minister is.  My brother-in-law became a Father through relating to his son.  His being was defined by the relationship, which involved the specific function he fulfilled.

Because the Church is already abundantly graced by God, the ordained receives the grace of the Holy Spirit through the Church.  The ordained is repositioned within the community which forms new relationships.  This change in personhood is a change in being.

Hahnenberg is very successful in applying this ancient Greek understanding of being to the question of sacramental character.  The Sacramental Character is the changed relationships.  The large lingering question remains:  Is this compatible with the contemporary theology of ordination in the Roman Catholic Church? Is being-in-relation adequate enough for a Western, contemporary theology.  We will explore this further next time.

I promised you personal relevance, and I will try to deliver.  At first glance, I can see two important implications.

1. You are your relationships.   The Enlightenment gave the West the awareness of the “I.”  I am an autonomous person who is morally responsible for my own actions and I must construct myself.  Well the Enlightenment also took away our relatedness.  The “I” became the primary starting point for….EVERYTHING.   We are still living this individualism each day, and by now, it’s inevitable.  There’s no going back.  I am the main character in my life, and you are the main character in your own life.  We can’t undo it, but we can try to recover something important.  There is no such thing as the isolated “I.” The Cappadocian’s teach us this.  The way you think, the way you talk, the meaning you find in your own life, has come to you because of your relatedness to other people.  You exist because two people abandoned their autonomous selves to give to each other.  From an act of relating love, you came to be (I hope you think about that next time you hear a discussion about sex).  Your existence starts there, and it doesn’t end there.  John Zizioulas says that to be is to move from an individual to a person.  You will find yourself as a dynamic person by extending outward in love in relationship to other persons.  Not only is this the route to happiness, but it is the route to existential contentment.  You find your individual self, by extending out of yourself in relationships.

2. The Christian in isolation does not exist at all.  What we know of God is how he relates to us.  The center of the Christian story is that God is continually extending beyond himself to relate.  Creation is an act of relating. And of course the Incarnation which we contemplate anew in a few days is the activity of a God relating to us.  The “we” that I speak of is the church which was primitively thought of as the body of Christ where Christ is the head.  To find life, to find meaning from the head, you necessarily must be related to the body.  To be related to the body, is to experience changing relationships, changing personhood, and thus, your very being is changed.  Your being as a Christian is rooted in your relating to Christ through the Church.   This has many ramifications, but here is what I have to say for Christmas:

Do not look for Christ in isolation; look for Christ in the other.  For however messed up the institution of the Church can be, it is there in the body of Christ that you will find Christ extending himself in love.  Secondly, look for Christ in the other in whom you wouldn’t expect Christ to be found.  It is through solidarity with that person that you will find Christ, and in relating to that person, you will exist.

Have a prayerful expectation of Christ’s coming again in Glory as you celebrate His first advent among us.

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[1] You remember ontology right?  Ontology is reflection on being.

[2] Edward Hahnenberg. Ministries: A Relational Approach. (New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. 2003), 96.

[3] Ibid 131.

[4] Ibid 201.

Ordination as a Metamorphosis

Metamorphosis

Grasshoppers do it. Fish do it. Frogs, toads, and newts do it.  A newt?

Do you suppose your pastor has done it?[1]  I would suggest you may have done it!

“So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!” (1Corinthians 5:17)

Paul seems to imply that when someone is in Christ, she becomes something different.  He even calls it a new creation!  This is what I’m talking about here: a change in being!  In philosophy, when we want to talk about being we will talk about ontology.   Therefore to talk about someone having a change in being is to talk about an “ontological change.”

Some folks, at least the Orthodox and Catholics, insist that their priests experience a change in being when they are anointed.  Before ordination the priest is simply a Christian.  After ordination the priest becomes someone entirely different, a Christian Priest.  This is very clear in the Western idea of Sacramental Character.  We say that baptism, confirmation, and ordination give an irremovable sacramental character.  What this means is that a person’s soul is marked out as belonging to Christ in a unique way.  This “seal” placed on a person cannot be removed.  The good news?  You can never become unbaptized (or rebaptized for that matter).  In the case of a priest, a priest is always a priest.  Even when removed from ministry for disciplinary reasons, the person has an indelible sacramental seal that makes his being forever a priest.

This idea of sacramental character is beautiful to some, and farfetched and repugnant to others.   In light of this, I have recently finished a paper entitled “Sacramental Character as Being-In-Relation in a Postmodern Context.”  In this paper, I try to talk about sacramental character in a way that is beautiful, accessible, and hopefully not repugnant to most.  I’ll post the full text soon.  For now, let’s unpack the first step, “Being-in-Relation.”

Remember the days when reciting the Nicene Creed flowed like this, “true God, from true God. Begotten not made, one in being with the Father?”  Those were the days before we started tripping over the word, “consubstantial.”  Three years later I still hear murmuring, “Consubstratumalilistic with the Father” mixed with “one in being-tial with the Father.”  What’s with the major theology word interrupting the liturgy?

Believe it or not, this is quite significant for our topic.  Notice that instead of consubstantial we used to say, “One in being.”  You may get the impression that the two words are the same.  But they aren’t!  And this is vitally important! 

You see there was a guy named Arius in the fourth century who said, “Hey, If the Son is begotten of the Father, doesn’t that mean that he was created by the Father?  And if he was created by the Father, doesn’t that mean that there was a time when he didn’t exist?”  As you can imagine, the Council of Nicaea was not a fan of this idea.[2]  The Council formulated a creed that was absolutely opposed to Arius’ position.  It said that Christ is eternally begotten of the Father, “God from God, Light from Light. True God from True God. Begotten not made. ὁμοούσιον with the Father.”  The Creed says that the Son is “homoousion”[3] or “Of the same substance” or “consubstantial” with the Father.  Basically, “whatever Divine stuff (ousia, or substance) the Father is, the Son is also that same Divine stuff (ousia, or substance).  God’s existence was starting to be defined by what God is.  In other words, God’s being was starting to be defined by God’s substance.   You still with me? Good.

You'll have to read footnote #2 for the context of this picture.

The old translation of the creed, “one in being” implies that being is the same as substance (ousia).  But as we will see, this is not the case.  Let’s move on.

Because the council was a little vague about its use of these Greek words, a wise cracker named Eunominus came up with a new argument.  It went something like this:

-The Father has no origin right?  The Father is “Ungenerate” (is not generated from anyone or anything)

-If the Father is Ungenerate then the Divine substance (ousia) must also be ungenerate.

-The Son was begotten of the Father right?

-If the Son is begotten then the Son must have an origin somewhere.

-If the Son is generated, then the Son is not Ungenerate.

-Therefore the Son must not share the same substance (ousia) as the Father.

God’s existence was rooted in God’s substance.  Because the Son did not share the same substance as the Father, the Son must not exist as God.

The three people who directly debated Eunominus were Basil, Gregory of Nyssa, and Gregory Nazianzus, the Cappadocian Fathers.   First they argued that Eunominus was arrogant.  Who can speak about God’s divine substance?  God’s substance or ousia, is so shrouded in light unfathomable that we cannot say what God is.  Gregory of Nazianzus said that the substance of God is hidden “beyond your feeble senses.”  For Eunominus to say that God’s substance was ungenerate was seen as arrogance in apprehending pure mystery.  So the Cappadocians insisted that we can say nothing about God’s substance.  All that we know about God is how He relates. 

God relates to us through salvation history and God relates to Himself through the divine persons or “hypostasis.”  As for Eunominus’ argument, they said:

-The quality of “ungenerate” does not belong to the divine substance (ousia) but rather to the person of the Father.

-Therefore, the begotteness of the Son does not effect His sharing in the divine ousia. 

The Cappadocian’s marked a significant shift in ontology:  Being was rooted not in substance, but in person.  What do we know about God’s being? We know little about God’s substance. We know about God’s personhood.  The term personhood for the Cappadocian’s included relationships.   What this means is that the Father cannot be Father without the Son.  The Son cannot be Son without the Father.  The Holy Spirit cannot proceed without the Father, and the Father cannot give procession with the Holy Spirit.  In the Trinity, there is no personhood without relationship.  There is no being without relationship.

Edward Hahnenberg and others[4] apply this ontology to the human person.  What can we say about my being?  According to the Cappadocian understanding of the Trinity, being is rooted in personhood.  We can speak about my personhood; how I relate. 

My brother, who is a father of three, spoke with me about becoming a father.  He told me that before their first, he and his wife (my sister) had carefully constructed their life together.  It was like a town built by the sea.  With the first baby, a typhoon came and completely washed away the lifestyle they had known.  It was very abrupt.   But aside from his radically new function (he now had to feed, change, and nap a living thing, and sleep a lot less) he did not feel like a father.  My brother became a father slowly as he began to interact with his son.  His being didn’t change immediately as the typhoon changed his lifestyle.  His being changed as he related to his family.

This is what I mean by being-in-relation.  According to the Cappadocian understanding of being inspired by the Trinity, being does not have to be rooted in my substance—what I am.  Being is rooted in my personhood—how I am—how I relate.

Next time we will tackle the question, “How can we understand the sacramental character as a change in being, when being is rooted in personhood?”  If sacramental character is outside of your tradition/interests, consider how the change in being of becoming a Christian is a change in being-in-relation.

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[1] Ok technically metamorphosis isn’t the most precise word. Metamorphosis implies a change in form, (Meta-change.  Morphe-form) and as far as I know, Sacred Chrism has never turned a person into a newt or otherwise.  What I mean to be talking about is “metaontasis” (onta-to be).   If someone else knows of the real word for this, let me know because I just made that up.  I’m trying to talk about a change in being.  

[2] This is the understatement of the new Church year (started in Advent).  In fact, to highlight how intense the real St. Nicholas was, I will tell you this story:  When Eusebius tried to defend Arius’ position at the Council, many of the bishops stood up and shouted, “You lie! Blasphemy!”  His speech was torn in two and some say that St. Nicholas was so worked up that he punched Eusebius in the face.    Jolly Ol’ St. Nick?  Get out of here with that smug, artificial, a-historical character.  The real St. Nicholas was a defender of Christ’s eternal existence, and the defender of the poor, and women who were to be sold into slavery/marriage.  WAAAAY more inspiring than Santa Claus.

[3] Homoousion comes from “homo-the same” and “ousia-substance.”  

[4] John Zizioulas, Catherine Mowery LaCugna