Panel Topic: Christian Systematic Theology
New Trinitarian Ontologies
Authors: Ryan Haecker, Jonathan Lyonhart, John Milbank, Graham Ward, Katherine Apostolacus, Aaron Khokhar, Eduard Fiedler
The study of the structure of being or ontology was once regarded as a seminal preparation for the study of God as the creative cause of all being in theology. Yet due largely to the influence of late-medieval theology, it has come to be separated from trinitarian theology, before God came to be conceived in early-modern philosophy as the supreme being of all beings in general metaphysics, natural theology, and modern ontology. In Gottlob Frege and Edmund Husserl, modern ontology has divided the ontological from the theological. The Analytic and Continental philosophical traditions have since tended to treat the Trinity as, at best, superfluous, and, at worst, redundant to modern formal ontologies. Yet with the postmodern collapse of all such formal ontologies, we can once more work to renew trinitarian theology. New Trinitarian Ontologies names a creative response to this pivotal collapse of modern formal ontologies. If ontology cannot contain but rather more radically points to God, and if all nature thus tends towards the supernatural, the angelic, and the metaphysical, then we shall work to renew this central investigation into the metaphysics or ontology of the Trinity. We have previously hosted a series of events on ‘New Trinitarian Ontologies’. In anticipation of the forthcoming publication of a two-volume essay collection, we will convene a panel of the European Academy of Religion Conference featuring papers on metaphysics or ontology in imitation of the Trinity.Chair: Ryan Haecker (University of Cambridge)Speakers:John Milbank (University of Nottingham), TBAGraham Ward (University of Oxford), TBA Ryan Haecker (University of Cambridge), TBAJonathan Lyonhart (Lincoln Christian University), TBAKatherine Apostolacus (Villanova University), TBA Aaron Khokhar (University of Cambridge), TBA