Ontological and Moral Presuppositions for Theologizing

Explanation of Terms

Presuppositions

Ontological

• Indispensible requirement • Something taken for granted • Presumption • Something required as a preconditions

• being, existence • Parmenides – founder of ontology • study of the inherent nature/being of something

Moral • not simply behavior or a code values, principles or standards • Morality is the dynamic response of personal freedom to the existential truth and authenticity of man

Ontological Presuppositions

Tertullian – anima naturaliter Christiana

Heracleitus - ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίµων

Ἄνθρωπος πάντων χρηµάτων F. Schliermacher – ‘feeling of utter dependence’

Ontological Presuppositions

Ontological Presuppositions

�  Theological Reflection �  Innate theocentricism

“while in other areas of knowledge it is the nature and method of research that finally leads to the subject and defines it a priori, in theology the opposite happens – it is the subject that prejudges absolutely, and defines the nature and method of research”

Method ‘Object’

God Prejudges method

vs

Not in search for an unknown ‘X’ Deus absconditus et Deus Revelatus

Impersonal God 1. mechanical understanding of the world [God becomes a faceless Prime Mover] and 2. a materialist understanding of the human person

Ontological Presuppositions � Motivation for research

�  nostalgia [νόστος + ἄλγος] and not curiosity [περιέργεια]

Personal God 1. synergy and nobility of the human person [life is not an absurd game], 2. a Personal God who continues to provide (Providence) and 3. response of awe and gratitude for God’s divine economy.

Ontological Presuppositions �  Personal God

�  Person called to ‘synergy’ �  Freedom and responsibility

�  For God – absolute �  For humanity – relative �  “the preservation of these analogies between

God and the human person with reference to the notions of freedom and responsibility is also the most substantial point of axiomatic and methodological differentiation between theology and philosophy”

Essential difference not the alleged one dimensional rationalism of philosophy but the absolutist understanding of freedom and responsibility

Moral Presuppositions “Not to every one, my friends, does it belong to philosophize about God; not to every one; the Subject is not so cheap and low; and I will add, not before every audience, nor at all times, nor on all points; but on certain occasions, and before certain persons, and within certain limits. Not to all men, because it is permitted only to those who have been examined, and are passed masters in meditation, and who have been previously purified in soul and body, or at the very least are being purified. For the impure to touch the pure is, we may safely say, not safe, just as it is unsafe to fix weak eyes upon the sun's rays.”

“…And what is the permitted occasion? It is when we are free from all external defilement or disturbance, and when that which rules within us is not confused with vexatious or erring images; like persons mixing up good writing with bad, or filth with the sweet odors of ointments…. And who are the permitted persons? They to whom the subject is of real concern, and not they who make it a matter of pleasant gossip, like any other thing, after the races, or the theatre, or a concert, or a dinner, or still lower employments. To such men as these, idle jests and pretty contradictions about these subjects are a part of their amusement.”

Moral Presuppositions

4 Theological Presuppositions � Creation ex nihilo

�  Creation of the human person in the image and according to the likeness of God

� The necessary distinction-in-unity between the essence and energies of God

�  The Incarnation – the sine qua non presupposition for all theology: cur Deus Homo?