Participatory Ontology
There exists a dualism in modernity between ‘faith’ and ‘reason’, born out of the Enlightenment project. As the disciples of reason broke free of oppressive faith they became hostile to it, and strove to establish autonomous reason, reason free from the considerations of faith – pure reason. Modernity has placed this pure reason and faith in conflict with one another; faith, especially in the project of Fundamentalism, has reacted with a system of pure of faith, untainted by the considerations of reason.
This pure reason leads to a sense in which the immanent and material are the exclusive domain of reason, and the transcendent is the exclusive domain of faith. To give real meaning to the theological in the postmodern world there is a requirement for a participatory theology, not merely a participation in the transcendent, however, but in the immanent also. That every work of the created (humanity in this case) reflects, first, its position in a created world, and second, its communion with the Creator. This demands that ultimately every element of the world be considered in light of its participation as a created thing.
Creation, within Christian Theology, must be viewed in the light of the Cross. The Resurrection changes the perspective of Christianity in all things and must be a consideration even in the discussion of what has gone before it. The theology of Christianity, its grand meta-narrative, is the Cross; the historical event of the Creation must be viewed as a chapter in the story of the Cross. Without this meta-narrative, Creation simply slips into presenting a natural theology.
The goal of this post is to offer a genuinely materialistic theology, along similar lines as Radical Orthodoxy, material in the sense that we will abandon Descartes in his argument that we are “thinking things” inhabiting a secondary reality as a body; and theological in the sense that this material body regains genuine relevance to transcendence. The requirement for the material reality of the Resurrection lies here: it is the purest statement of the relevance of the body. We must do away with the second great dualism of modernity, that of body and soul; stop thinking of the two as detached realities held together by some vicious scheme or failure, and see them as one created thing.
