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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