ontological categories

Allow me to elaborate.

Every theology relies upon an “ontology”: a language for talking about the nature of reality at its most abstract. “Ontological categories” are those distinctions which we use to cut the messy, cheesy pizza of reality into nice, neat slices. For example, many cultures divided reality into three “slices”: the heavens, the earth, and the underworld. The ancient Greek atomists thought all phenomena could be sliced into four elements: earth, air, fire, and water. To describe ultimate reality, Taoists might refer to the duality of yin and yang, while Buddhists might speak of samsara and nirvana. 

In modern Western Christian and post-Christian cultures, religious folk tend to speak in terms of dualistic categories such as “matter and spirit” or “body and soul.” Materialists subtract the “spirit”/“soul” side out of the equation and attempt to reduce everything to “matter,” which is to say “atoms in void” or (after Einstein) “matter-energy in spacetime.” 

My approach integrates learnings from Eastern philosophy and modern science to develop ontological categories which both transcend materialism and deepen our understanding of “spirit.” These categories then serve to inform my theological understanding of what Christ reveals, unfolding a powerful vision of the shape of reality. 

Exciting stuff, right?

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