When every freedom, nature & grace problem looks like a deterministic, pantheistic nail, change your metaphysical hammer

Relational ontologies can preserve simplicity, recognize analogy & avoid modal fallacies.

Otherwise, though, when the only tool one has is the analogia hammer of a substantivist metaphysic, every freedom, nature & grace problem will look like a deterministic, pantheistic nail.

Maybe it’s because I implicitly Brackenize Bulgakov & Hegel, DBH & JDW, taking

being as both entity & activity,

persons & societies as equiprimordial,

our being mutually constituted as Totus Christus as an intersubjective doing,

perichoresis as beyond not without analogy,

the hypostatic procession of logoi from Logos as the kataphatic ex Deo of an apophatic ex nihilo,

the divine esse intentionale as truly affected by rational creatures with no diminishment of intrinsic perfections –

that I don’t see

their theo-systems as especially fraught, modally,

their kenotic accounts as heterodoxically radical,

their nature – grace intrinsicism as ad hoc & motivated by illicit soteriological preconceptions or

how Christ’s eternally & freely self-determined incarnational self-constitution reduces to a mere metaphysical necessity.

Even without a theodicy, from what the Son & Spirit have shown us of the Father’s love, it is with – not presumption, but – trust that we can know that the reality of sin fits (doesn’t destroy) the divine narrative, i.e. we can trust that it’s “behovely” but not “amisse,” conquered so not perduring. While this works well enough for sin in general, in no way do I see it working for an everlasting perdition in particular.

While I do like to retrieve soul–body metaphors & substantial distinctions into my own relational stances (w/field metaphors), it doesn’t make sense to use substantivist categories to critique those panentheisms that are otherwise employing mostly relational ontologies.