10/15/2011

Relational Ontology

It has been interesting to read through the trial transcript of the Leithart trial. I haven't finished reading it all, so perhaps I've missed it, but one of the things I simply assumed, since people in Peter's presbytery would know him better than most of the internet critics, is that they would home in on the key insight of his theology. In what I read so far, however, I still found the crude "parallel soteriology" allegations that plague most other attempts to understand what Peter is getting at.

Maybe I'm wrong, but it seems like the key to Peter's theology is his relational ontology. In other words, we are social beings - our "in relation"-ness is part of our very being. This is why Peter's theology of baptism has the appearance of saying more than a lot of people are comfortable with about the sacrament. A person, prior to church relationship, is different (ontologically, even) from that same person, after being brought into the church. Peter is willing to speak in traditional language when needed, but he pushes back against traditional "inside" vs. "outside" language because that isn't the key power of the sacrament for him - changing someone's insides. A person is a social being. Baptism is a receptor site for the society of the church. Therefore, baptism changes the person - gives them new responsibilities, new relationships with the head of the church.

If we are social beings and social changes result in changes to who we are, then everything else Peter says about baptism follows nicely. I'm not saying he has a deductive theology. But it does seem like he has a philosophical insight about anthropology that can't help but inform his exegesis and other theologizing. If "relational ontology" wasn't on trial, then Peter Leithart's theology wasn't on trial.