New Trinitarian Ontologies | Dr. Ryan Haecker

Added: 2026-05-10

[00:00:04]Well, hello everyone. I'm here now with Dr. Ryan Hacker who uh I did my PhD with at Cambridge. Not he wasn't my dissertation supervisor uh but we did it at the same time and so we were there at the same time and uh we also got to know each other a lot better through uh co- uh through founding the new trinitarian ontologies conference in 2019. And now the purpose of this occasion uh because our book uh that we co-edited with John Milbank uh just finally came out, New Trinitarian Ontologies Volume 1. And I've invited Ryan uh on to the channel to discuss that today and to talk about Trinitarian Ontologies, what's new about them, all of that good stuff. So, thank you so much for being here, Dr. Hacker.

[00:00:52]>> It's a pleasure to be with you. Thank you for inviting me.

[00:00:55]>> Yeah. Well, um, to just kind of get us started, can you give our audience a sense of like how did this whole new trinitarian ontologies thing begin? How did we get to where we are now with the book and the conference? Like, what started this?

[00:01:10]>> Well, it must sound like a wild and crazy endeavor, and I imagine it's quite mystifying to many people throughout the world, but it's an endeavor that's been ongoing for many decades now, but has only recently arrived in the Anglohone world and particularly through England, in America, and beyond. And it began with a letter that was written by the archbishop of Aken Klaus Himmer to the very famous Jesuit German theologian Hanser von Balthazar on the topic of trinitarian ontology as he called it thesis on trinitarian. And he argued that the question of being of what there is and its meaning could only be coherently answered by recalling the sources of Christian revelation and the Christian doctrine of the trinity as the innermost shape of what there is or of being. So I came across this line of inquiry when I studied with John Milbank and Connor Cunningham at the University of Nottingham. And in particular, I remember in some of our seminars, John Milbe had mentioned it and he recommended reading Piercod who was a recent Italian exponent of this line of thinking and had devised a new research institute called the Sophia Institute in Florence that was promoting investigations in terology. And when I came to Cambridge, I quickly recognized that there was an immense amount of resources. It was a sterling venue for international conferences. And I began to envision what we might do for that.

[00:02:21]And my mind kept coming back to this topic, thinking that this was a really exciting line of research that had was unexplored and was long overdue to be platformed on the largest scale for an international audience. So I met with John in the library and we talked about it and then I drew up a conference proposal, sent it to some friends and Jonathan, you were one of the first people to respond and we met at a pub and we started talking about what it could happen and 14 months later we were hosting the largest international conference on philosophy of religion in the history of the University of Cambridge. We made a big splash. We had um videos for all of the panels for the three days. We had a magnificent dinner in celebration at Peter House. And it's since grown into an international movement that has conferences around the world. Most recently the triium conference near Prague in a town called Olamus. And in the coming years there will also be follow-up conferences not only in the Czech Republic but also in Italy and perhaps also in England, North America. So we're at the cusp of something momentous and I hope that um these little seeds have grown into something enormous and profound and I'm grateful that we could all be a part of that.

[00:03:22]>> Yeah. And and for anyone listening, those conference talks uh are still available on YouTube. You can go right now uh you know after you've subscribed to this channel of course uh first but then you can go and check those videos out as well. We got talks I I mean all of the different speakers Ryan who were some of the people we had speak at that conference.

[00:03:42]>> Well I was told by Andrew Davidson who's now the regist professor at Oxford that it was the the most stariest lineup of the most famous theologians in the world which is no understatement. We had Aron Williams, David Binley, John Milbank, Katherryn Fix, Graham Ward, um, and and so many others who I I just shudder to sort of mention some at the expense of others because we had so many famous people. We also had younger scholars. We made a deliberate effort to try to include a younger generation of emerging scholars and talents so that we could have it representative of some of the new lines of thinking as well as youth interest in this this ancient topic. And it was followed by a symposium and other panels at the European Academy of Religion in which we feature younger scholars as well as um people from diverse areas of expertise and interest.

[00:04:22]And I hope that it will um as I've long advocated, the trinity is no one's belonging. No more than Christianity is anyone's belonging. We inherit it. We carry it and we hope to pass it on to the future generations with the same excitement and zeal that perhaps the earliest followers of Christ had but perhaps also with um in ways that we can't yet anticipate how it will flourish in the future. So um my hope was always that by drawing together the talents of the largest group that we could u it will bear fruit in the most surprising new ways.

[00:04:48]>> Yeah. Well great. So new trinitarian ontologies for some of our listeners who might just not be aware or acquainted with these terms like let's start really simple uh like what is ontology? Neutr trinitarian ontologies like what is ontology? That's that's not a common word for a lot of people by the even the title of the book. So the word ontology is a combination of two Greek root words. One is ontos which is the adverb form of the word tuon for what is and also the word loia um which is the plural form of the word logos for speech or reason. And typically uh we use the term loia to talk about a study or investigation into something. That's how we use the word biology. So the word ontology is like that. It means the study of what there is or what exists.

[00:05:33]And in another way can be said to be the study of the structure of being and its relations to what it is in um internally and externally or um how we conceive of what there is in the most fundamental and coherent way. And typically this topic has been separated from the study of theology from the study of what God is because you might say for instance that God is not a being that um you cannot think of God coherently as a being. And so we tend to separate these two in the study of philosophy on one hand theology on the other hand. This is very much a artifact of the medieval university where the study of theology was kept at the end whereas the study of philosophy was considered a preparatory study in the masters of arts area and since then we of course have now disciplinary fields of theology and philosophy that never sort of crossed paths and so they're often reticent to speak about these issues that pertain to the the expertise of the other but in another more fundamental sense you can't even begin to talk about God as the principle of being or the creative source of all being or what there is as it exists within the creative world without talking about what there is and how God creates it or the world as it were a reflection of God as its principle and source. So the call of trinittology is to rethink the structure of being as though it were fundamentally shaped by the the innermost essence of what God is as trinity. That is to think of being as not just a kind of generic field of what there is in a kind of monistic totality but rather something that's always already shaped by the dynamic processual relations of the trinity from the beginning and always thereafter.

[00:06:56]Well, that sort of bridges into my next question, which is okay, ontology. What is what is the nature of being? All of those types of questions. But what happens when you put trinitarian in front of that word? What happens when ontology becomes trinitarian?

[00:07:09]>> Yeah. Yes. So the radical claim of trinitarian is that the question of what there is what Martin Haidiger styled as the zin froga the the question of being or its meaning and its truth can only be coherently answered by recalling the doctrine of the trinity as the innermost essence and source of being as well as how we understand it through its relational capacities amongst ourselves and in our human destiny. That is we can't think of being as though it were something that stood outside of us as though it were a kind of field of what there is a kind of object field of things on the one hand or even as though it were a merely transcendental hypothetical question of what could possibly be as liveness for instance framed the question of why is there something rather than nothing. So we have to think of it in the depth of our human community in its history and ultimately in its myths and revelation and what those can tell us about how we've understood ourselves and how it opens up horizons for investigating that question again for ourselves in relation to others. So the the claim of trinity ontology is that you cannot think of without the trinity and that the trinity answers the fundamental questions of what there is.

[00:08:10]>> Yeah. So the the I mean if the trinity is at the heart of all things, you're not going to be able to talk about the trinity separate from the heart of all things. You kind of have to do those together. Um well, we'll get more into that uh in later questions and like why why is this the case? Why can't you talk about ontology without the trinity and vice versa? But before we get there, let's finish defining terms. Uh we got trinitarian, we got ontology. What about these trinitarian ontologies is new?

[00:08:38]What makes the book and the conference new trinitarian ontologies? Are are you inventing this?

[00:08:43]>> When we proposed it that there might be a parallel conference called old trinitarian ontologies that is that uh we're missing the old trinity ontology but doing something new or how could you say anything new about the trinity when god always already was or uh are we sort of fabricating some new trinity like new coke that we're just going to issue to replace classic cocaola classic trinitarian doctrine. So what I argued in a chapter that I wrote for the first volume of the tranicontologies and trinitarian philosophy series in a chapter called the novelty of trinitarontology which responds in another way to an article by John Betts which is the article what is new in trinitontology is that the novelty of trinitarian is both essential to the trinity in so far as the trinity begets its own novelty. It begs the son as it stands as other in relation to the father but also in another way as that that begetting is carried through as is reflected by the spirit in the world as created such that the world carries with it the capacity for newness and newness in the world shows us the novelty of the trinity. One way of thinking about this is on Christmas day when we think about the nativity of Christ with Mary, we're also thinking about not just that event in the history of mankind, but also about the creation of of the world of the church and of the church as an model of the world in its own novelty. So we're thinking about novelty as such when we think about as how God can become man such that that shows us as it were the god begetting of the world such that we can receive the god man. Another way of saying this is that that we can't think about the trinity without thinking of its own novelty. But by thinking about the trinity as the beginner of novelty, we also think about it as always renewed in subsequent currents of intellectual discourse subsequent debates that have been raised about how we can think about the trinity and it's relation to what there is or ontology.

[00:10:18]So the in the academic view though what makes new trantologies new or trinitantologies new is that it responds to ways of obuscating or marginalizing the way by which we approach the topic of the trinity from first philosophy or metaphysics. That is it it it it tries to show that the old way of separating ontology from the trinity or trinitarian doctrine always fails. That it it cannot sustain its own coherence by thinking of being unto itself as though it were structurally coherent and held together according to its own internal logic and standards. And so it raises a criticism against various ways of thinking about what you might call secular or formal ontology which conceives of the form of ontology in a in the world apart from God in a world that doesn't need God or in which there's a god-shaped hole within the world. So it argues variously that the way that ontology has been thought since the term was coined by the successors of Christian Wolf and arguably even beforehand in the medieval debates about general metaphysics that these ways of thinking about ontology that haven't radically involved theology always fall apart. And we can see that in successive currents not only in the criticisms have been made by subsequent generations of earlier thinkers but perhaps even at the present day with contemporary attempts to articulate an ontology that was founded on the one hand on a kind of analytic deduction of of a priori arguments as we find in analytic philosophy or on the other hand an attempt to discover a kind of originary supplement whether it be a being or writing or difference is always deferred and so many other things that we find trotten out in continental philosophy. And we can also apply this to contemporary debates about object-oriented ontology or about radical materialism and and so on. And I I I hope that the novel of the trinity will be a continual source of inspiration for raising this question of how it is that that not only being has its own coherence, but what about theology does it require in order to sustain its own legitimacy. And if that's the case, then it's continual sorts of theological investigation, not just in matters of first philosophy, but across all of the arts and sciences and indeed even in its leading critics.

[00:12:17]>> Yeah. So there so there's this sense of yeah we're not totally in it's not like we're coming up with a new god. It's you know we're retrieving maybe you could say a renewed trinitarian ontology. And yet at the same time there is this sense that this emphasis this push back against these sort of secular ontologies.

[00:12:37]Our willingness to do that is new. Our willingness to put that which is old into conversation with what's going on now and to say you can't do what you're doing. We need to return. Maybe that's the part of it that's that's new is our willingness to kind of do that. Um >> I think the engagement with contemporary philosophy that discusses issues of metaphysics or ontology is is the thrust of transnatlogy. But in another sense we can see in Hans from Balthazar in Ani de Lubach in um earlier writers in the 20th century I mean you can look at GK Chesterton you can look at um you can look at Carl Bar you can see many people who are engaging with currents of modern thought that had emerged and had challenged wonderful Christian beliefs.

[00:13:19]So in another way what we're doing is we're sort of updating apologetics as we find already in Justin Martyr and in u in origin of Alexandria. We're bringing that to the 21st century and trying to argue that we can still stand upon the basis of Christian doctrine in a radical way while at the same time challenging a lot of the assumptions that other divides deny the legitimacy of theology as a as a legitimate conversation partner in the spir discourse about our shared beliefs and practices and how we can make a better world.

[00:13:46]>> So maybe new wine skins, but they it's the same old wine that's been aging and ripening the whole time. Uh well and then there was there was also that really other interesting point you made that if the trinity isn't just this static thing you know like there might be something about God that is you know the classical theist element but at the same time this this god is preceding it's begotten it's unfolding it's uh and in that sense he this trinity is the thing that makes all things new I make all things new and so uh that do you see that as sort of overcoming this divide between classical theism and process theology or to just say that that's not even a coherent divide to begin with. Um well I'm interested in Alfred North Whitehead and I studied Charles Hartsornne who interestingly was a professor at the University of Texas where I studied as an undergraduate. I have been indebted in some ways to process theology, but I've never thought that we have to raise a sharp distinction between between classical theism and I believe you sometimes call us neocclassical theism in the case of hard thorn and process philosophy. That is I I I would argue and I think Sarah Klay had once in this in an interview that she gave many years ago that there already is a radical claim to process within the divine essence. That is the the missions and the hypothesis and their various relations are thought in a proc in process way and the distinction between time and eternity breaks down in God who creates the world in time such that you cannot say that that God is simply outside of time because God is also the begget of that which is in time. So God must carry within himself as it were the possibility of begetting all things in time and thereby all processes. So I I I tend to think that we we can perhaps collapse a number of the sort of objectified conceptions of classical theism as it developed among medieval scholastics by raising the critique of process theology. So for instance, we might want to argue that we cannot conceive of divine eternity without also thinking of the beginning relation through the son of the created world and also god's involvement through history in the created world. So that god is not as it were simply timeless or simply ahistorical. I think that's a very helpful line of critique. But I've never been entirely persuaded that we have to for instance conceive of God in a sort of pan pantheistic manner whereby God becomes as it were the the rarified body of the realified world or by which the world becomes a kind of object in the mind of God. I feel like all of these are sort of very finite human conceptions that sort of somehow deny the mystery of God as well as the greater complexity that occurs when we recognize God's sort of mutual imminence in virtue of God's transcendence. That is God's otherness doesn't also deny God's intimacy to us. It rather reaffirms it. It shows us that it's precisely by being beyond the world that God can be more intimately engaged with us and be at the very heart of all things.

[00:16:30]>> Yeah, that's interesting because uh I mean we interviewed John Milbank, the other editor on the project uh just a couple days ago and he actually made he's making a very similar move that God is so beyond us in our categories that he can loop back and be close to us in a way that's beyond our understanding. You know what I mean?

[00:16:46]>> Well, this from John, so I can't disagree.

[00:16:48]>> Yeah. Yeah. We're all just stealing from him. Uh much much like he would say the secular stole from us. So, uh well, so why we've been talking about how the trinity and God kind of get removed from this ontological discussion? Why does that happen? Why does the trinity get pushed into the margins of serious thinking in modern philosophy and culture? Um is that a phil philosophical story? Is it a historical one? Lead us lead us there, man.

[00:17:16]Yes. So as early as Sabaton Aurora, there was a great Christian anxiety about the loss of authentic Christian culture and of the sources of Christian belief. And since then there have been various genealogies of decline or of the loss of true Christianity. And this was something that was hotly debated during the reformation and continues to be hotly debated today. And there were various scholarly enterprises that attempt to construct genealogies of modernity and the fall of Christian culture or how we lost as the authentic spirit of Christianity. And in my book, Restoring Reason, I try to answer some of these by developing a a new genealogy, one that's inspired origin of Alexandria. And what I argue is that we don't witness as it were a historical and temporal fall whereby we lose the knowledge of the trinity or the knowledge of God even, but rather we witness what you might call a metahistorical fall. And this is indebted to the work of Sergey Bulakov.

[00:18:00]This metaphysical fall is not something that happens in time, although it's echoed in time. So it's an eternal process that we is is carried out variously at different moments in human history. So the loss of the trinity as arguably it occurred in Eden. It occurred perhaps even with the fall of the first angels. But what we see happening is that with the very first development of the doctrine of the trinity which always was a kind of hypergeometrical metaphor for what God could be. It's a way of talking in finite human terms of what we think God's love as it's shown to us in the world could be like even at the very moment of that we also find detractors and people who are misunderstanding what it was about. So in the origins crisis for instance which I cover in my dissertation in my book coming out we find people who radically misunderstand what origin is trying to communicate his system and how it coheres and accuse him of things that he himself argued against and we also find this in the Iranian controversy where where we have on the one hand someone who's trying to simplify the trinity areas and siblius and we have other people who are trying to make show how the complexities answer to those challenges in a way that is still carried on for instance with Jewish and Muslim debates about the trinity and Christianity and then further on we have the the debate with Maximus the confessor about the the will of the divine persons and Maximus was himself mutilated and a martyr for that cause but we we so I think we witness this over and over again so it shouldn't surprise us that there are moments of whereby the complexity of trinitarian doctrine causes a lapse that causes alternative theories to be formulated and what I think has happened is that we have this desire that is that's carried on throughout the philosophical tradition arguably you find it already among Aristotle and the stoics you see it again in 13th century Paris and continuing on in trench philosophy in a very a very sort of devious way. We see a continental interest to try to sort of simplify things to their basic elements and to analyze them back down to something that is not God that is something that we can where we can build up a kind of machine image of what God should be on that basis and all of these ultimately in their strive for coherency they want to deny the paracoretic mutual involvement of the divine person. They don't want fundamentally to allow that God could be love and that God knows himself through love and that we know God as love. They want to deny that kind of ecstasy that would explode the coherent basic forms of thought by which we try to capture God in our imagination. And so so if you want to sort of track down some of the key moments in this, you can see for instance in the distinction between a general metaphysics and theology in Duncotus, theology being as it were the domain of charitable practice, general metaphysics being intellectual speculation. You can see for instance William of AAM who radically questioned the the reality of universal forms in favor of what can be spoken of of things within the world. who appealed for instance to revelation as an answer to philosophical questions that otherwise couldn't be given a coherent meaning.

[00:20:31]You can see this in linenets in a attempt to form a principal identity that would be framed through monads in their various relations. You can see it in fidlocker for whom the question of the trinity was relegated to an appendix in his systematic theology because he couldn't find a coherent answer within cantian logic form. And in another way you might also say that you can find even heretical um or heterodox formulations in the works of Fred Schl of Fred Shelling and Gorgville and Fred Hegel for whom they devised very elaborate systems of divine subjectivity of the trinity of various various powers and potencies that could be trinitarian style but in a way seem to recapitulate ancient Valentinian gnostic heresies. So I feel like we've we've we've circled around the trinity in many ways. And what tends to happen in the academy is that people consider it to be too complicated and they consider in virtue of a kind of academic division of labor that they have to bracket any question of the trinity so they can focus on so many other topics. So and we'll bring in the trinity as a doctrine that can perhaps illuminate some particular question but for which they don't in fact have to investigate more fully. And I I think that's well and good for a number of different things. Like if you're a parish priest, yes, of course you don't have to you don't have to be reading the works of of Gregory of Nissa on Trinity Sunday. But if you're a professor at one of the most distinguished universities the world, Cambridge or Oxford or Notre Dame, you really should have a way of explaining the Trinity in a way that can answer both the historical development as well as the basic questions, the heretical reformulations, as well as the way that you can speak to it as something that's relevant to contemporary science and the arts and what we study today as theologians.

[00:21:58]Okay. So, there's there's this sense in which it's its complexity scares people off, but also just you you see this as almost like a meta, as you said, thing.

[00:22:08]This is something that is almost just now in our DNA that we we are like because if we if we were open to it, we would see it as kind of the foundation of everything and in everything and reflected in everything and >> Yeah.

[00:22:23]Trinitap that if you think you understand the trinity you don't >> did he say so he he's he's getting to quantum physics early then right like he's >> yeah well uh I mean even daycart is in Augustine first right so >> uh well if if these modern ontologies and even at a meta level like everyone's ontology if it's non-tritarian um if they're kind of moving away from the Trinity or avoiding it or trying to think the world without it. What is it they're lacking? Like other than just, hey, you're heretics. What what practically changes when you get rid of the Trinity? What what what are we really missing that's good stuff and we need to get back to? I think what the trinity fundamentally shows us is that that being as we encounter it for ourselves and in our lives is relational. Is something that opens up through a relation of love that carries with it an ecstasy to be more than itself and to go beyond itself and to show us that that we are only who we are in relation to others and in a world that we receive and don't have direct mastery of. It it denies any kind of monological mastery of what there could be and the time time as though we're captured by space and a space that is always present to us. So it opens up a field of mystery and wonder and invites us to become more of who we are by partaking of that. And I think that's something that when you communicate it in those terms, it's much more inviting and felicitus than when for instance you try to brow pebeat people with various arcane historical heresies. So it's no use for instance talking to someone who doesn't believe in Jesus about whether or not they're a civilian or whether or not they're a semipolagian or any other such things. That is you have to approach them on terms that they desire and for which they'll find joy and and hope for. And I I want to encourage people with the newness of Trinitrontology and also with the generosity of so many people who have contributed to this movement across the world and at our conference and our books that what we're doing is trying to give hope to a wider world that has often times forgotten what it could be and what the sources of its of its heritage might be and what we what we can learn from the past as a guide for the future.

[00:24:40]>> Yeah. Let me So, so what I've always seen is essential about it and I think it connects to what you're saying and let me know if I've missed anything or left anything out. I mean, is is this oneness and manyness that a lot of ontologies might make oneness most fundamental um and then they they have to say that manyness, time, difference, otherness, relationality, love. uh those things are somehow less real or less good or even just straight up illusions uh that kind of get dissolved as drops into this broader cosmic monistic ocean. Uh or they go the other way and they kind of absolutize manyiness and difference and they lose sight of the underlying unity and oneness at the heart of all things.

[00:25:24]Um, and for me it's always just been the trinity holds those two things in tension. And once you have that, it makes sense of everything else. Like you might not be able to make sense of it, but once you have it as the ground of all things, then all other things can be made sense of in light of that. Um, but I I want do you think there's is that kind of the heart of it or is there more to it that that we're I mean I think it's one of those things that's infinitely unfolding as you said. So as soon as I say this, someone else will say something better and then you'll say, you know, uh God never God never uh reveals himself twice in the same way.

[00:25:59]That's the newness you're getting at.

[00:26:01]But uh >> I think so. So one of the difficulties we have in talking about the Trinity is that however we begin to talk about it, we're always going to be inadequate to the object of our description. So it's a bit like for instance if you were to try to to give a description of someone you love deeply about by by illustrating one scene sort of in a drama. How could you show that p that person that you love them or that they love you? You can't possibly capture something absolutely infinite in any finite terms. But talking about it in terms of the one and the many is as good as anything else.

[00:26:29]It's as good as talking about it in terms of three and one or as triangles and circles. And I I think what what it shows us is that there have been moments in the reflection upon what there is ontology whereby the multiplicity and unity have been thundered either in favor of unity or multiplicity as either in favor of a unification that that denies the true multiplicity and variety of what there is or on the other hand of a multiplicity that loses coherence because it no longer holds together as one. And we can see this as early as the beginning of western philosophy. We can see for instance in perminities and his successors how they wish to overcome the the the abyss of the non-being by affirming all that was as being as one.

[00:27:09]On the other hand, you can see the ancient atomists and the Epicurans uh desire to find the basic building blocks of what there could be and then to wonder about the ultimate construction of them later as they were something that would be decided in some aptitious way. They didn't need some prior philosophical determination. And in another way you can see it even today there's a famous debate between Jules Doo on the one hand and Ela Badu on the other whereby Deloo is indicted by Badu for affirming that that everything is of substance in a neo spinosist way and that there is virtual relations all the way down so that everything is somehow sort of secondary independent for its multiplicity upon unity. On the other hand, Delooze has argued against Badu and his successors have done the same that Badu in his affirming of sheer multiplicity has no way of thinking the multiple except by a kind of arbitrary decision that has to be constructed as some future time that's always held in oayance. So the debate continues and it likely will forever because there's a continual desire both for discovering the multiplicity of that which can be built as one made into one on the and also a desire to hold it all together from the beginning such that whenever someone builds something it always already was in a systematic coherence and I hope as you say that the trinity will show us that this is a false dilemma. We don't have to choose either of those two options. We can recognize that the multiplicity of things is an expression of God's own multiplicity of God's own becoming other both for himself and the creation of the world and the invitation to love while at the same time the unity of God is a way of showing that that relation always was for us that is remains as a covenant as a promise of God's love and the restoration of all things to unity with God a unity that moreover as origin had already argued against his his detractors and his later his later heretical um mal foration that he doesn't deny the trueness of multiplicity. He doesn't deny to us the authenticity of our own experience as one and not another or as in our distinct individuality.

[00:29:03]>> So if I ask you which one's more fundamental, the oneness or the freess, are you just going to say both? Would you just say both?

[00:29:09]>> Because as Hegel had argued in the doctrine of being in the science of logic, you can't coherently think of one or many independently of one >> without each other. Yeah, >> that's right. And Plato already argues this in the permenities. If you look at the first the second argument of the permenities in um the section the section of the dialectical hypothesis he argues that you cannot begin to think of multiplicity except as you multiply the one but the multiplication of one must also be united as one. And so we already have a kind of desire for trinitarian relational unity in in pre-christians in classical Greek philosophy. This is something that Simone Vay had famously argued and also it was argued by origin and Clement of Alexandria. So, it's a long-standing belief that the Christians have, as it were, taken the the the gold of the Egyptians, the the spoilsio Egyptoum, and they've translated it to Christian wisdom. And I hope that's what we're doing today. We just have to as we're draw from the the rivers, the golden rivers of of the sane in Paris and all the the mal formations of Parisian philosophy in order to build up something new that can answer to the challenges of modern thought.

[00:30:05]>> It's interesting the because that Hegelian move, it's the same one Jordan Wood made when he was on our show a while back. Um, >> yeah. Yeah. It's you're both Hegelians.

[00:30:15]Uh >> or maybe from who knows >> or or Yeah. Or or maybe time is an illusion and Hegel learned it from you.

[00:30:21]Um but uh >> where where do you see yourself in relation to I mean your trinitarian ontology in relation to what you know that he Hegelian move that Jordan makes.

[00:30:36]Do you see yourself as contrasting or just very much making the same move?

[00:30:40]Where do you see that and yourself in relation to this sort of monistic christologology that David Bentley Hart's trying to do? Uh, and and as a basis, John Milbank in the episode we just did said Jordan's wrong, David's right. Are you also say or are you like, no, no, Hegel, Jordan's right, David's wrong. Help us figure this out.

[00:31:02]For the sake of of making the conversation interesting, I will want to argue that one cannot conceive of Christ in a totally monistic fashion that that pins either towards iliaticism or a kind of advite of adanta mysticism that is inauthentic to the the becoming of multiple the beginning of Christ as other that shows us the radical otherness of the world. And now I don't know that David Hart would entirely disagree with that. Maybe there's some way we could sort all of this out. But my suspicion is that this is going in the wrong direction. Now, what I will say about Jordan Daniel Wood, who's a friend of mine and who I've interviewed and have learned a lot from, is that I think that our projects are running in close to the same direction because they're so close. There's an interesting tension and dissonance between our thoughts. So, there's two sort of very approximate points of tension. So, one is that my project is sort of backdating the genealogy of the trinity and and indeed logic and the sort of birth of a kind of phil philosophical theology to origin of Alexandria, not Maximus, the professor. Well, of course, Jordan recognized that these two are in conversation and that Maximus is developing a lot or just thought and indeed in the final version of my book that's coming out soon, you'll see that I do sort of acknowledge Jordan Wood's development and show that as the sort of positive line of development from origin that was sadly lost. That being said, I think that Origin is more philosophically direct and also honest with his sources and you can learn a lot from how he presents those sources and the questions that he raises about them in a way that is less easy to find in Maximistic Confessor. But perhaps also more, you might say, originary to the development of of Christian and trinitarian thought and particularly with relation to logic. And this is where my my second point comes in that I would argue that we cannot think of a a what is Jordan Daniel would call a christoologgical identity or a a um is crystal unity. Is that what he calls it?

[00:32:47]>> Something like that. Yeah.

[00:32:49]>> We cannot conceive a crystal unity without the trinity. That is we cannot get to christologology and talking about the dialect of christologology without talking about the trinity. But to talk about the dialect of the trinity, you have to talk about the beginning of the son from the father and also about as origin famously describes about the divine logos which is itself spoken of from eternity by the son of the father and in such a way that could be subsequently articulated in a way that was always already available by the development of logic. So logic in a way has an essential role here in how we conceive of god. also while at the same time not denying that that that that God comes first in what there is and in the beginning of the world and in how we come to know it. So, so the what the radical point that I'm making which I think is a point of dissonance and will be I hope later source of critique friendly critique against Jordan Daniel Wood is that that we don't have to have a compet competition between the the hypoatic logic of Christ and the trinity on the one hand and logic and dialectics on the other hand that these are always already contained with one another and the way by which we discover it in the way by which we invent it in the course of human history in the development of the various systems and syllogisms of formal logic is itself also a discovery of what always already was there which was communicated by the angels on behalf of the logos and which shows us how God had made intelligible a world that by which we can come to know and love him.

[00:34:07]So what I would argue is that there's a higher you might say a transital domain that is no less embedded in the hypothesis by which we can come to know the hypothesis and which is always already invited from God's own self beginning and the love by which we're invited to share with God and love know him more fully.

[00:34:23]>> Cool. And I'm just trying to stir stir up crap here because then the the more the more you guys are all fighting with each other, the more it's easy to get you to come onto my show and argue. Uh so >> no. Well, thank you for that later.

[00:34:37]It'll be fun. I It's It's often people who agree the most but have the most argue about. I think it was Engles who said that it shows the maturity of intellectual movement that it can have schisms. So um >> that's what Jordan said about David uh David Ellie Hart as well is like we're so close on so many things that the tensions really do stick out.

[00:34:56]>> Yeah. Well let's um I think one of the things in the book kind of pivoting back to the book you know because we're here to sell copies people. Come on. Come on. New trinitarian ontologies. Um, a lot of this book is about this worldly things, a lot of the chapters, ecology, politics, the body. Um, and I think we're already the the answer to this has already been implicit in a lot of the things that you've already been saying today. But why does a trinitarian ontology project end up caring about the material world? um what is it in our ontology that isn't trying to get more fundamental than the material world but actually returns us back to it. So civil of Alexandria had argued against Ntorius that the incarnation implies a radical involvement of God within the world and most especially in God becoming man and giving birth from Mary not through Mary but from Mary and that that God's humanity was shown through also the human beetting of Mary of of Jesus. And now this is important because it shows that if God is to be fully human, he must be fully within the world in a way that that the divine is not simply transcendent and other than us but also intimate to us through the most intimate and imminent bonds that we can share with one another within the material world. And so to argue against the an abstract separation for instance of the form of the matter or the spirit and the body or of God and the world, we can say as Christians that that the incarnation shows that God creates the world in which God can come into the world and that God remains with us in the world through the sacraments through the church and through acts of charity. And in that way also we discover that God never was entirely absent from the world in which God created for us to come to know him. So now this also has implications for how we think about these philosophical terms such as matter or being or relation that we cannot as Aristotle for instance conceive to them entirely separate them from the way by which they become formed to what they must be that is already an Aristotle and arguably he's argu developing an argument against a line of materialism they discovered in the ancient atomists and that has continued in a number of different ways thereafters that he wants to conceive of matter formally distinct from substance that is that matter is a way of thinking about the extension of things as they appear in space and in the world of space and time. And subsequently people have tried to imagine that there is some kind of capuscular matter that is the base from which we build up all things from some kind of material building block whatever that might be. It could be something like mass or it could be something like extended things in contemporary physics.

[00:37:39]But inevitably what happens is that we can only begin to think of that even at the level of consciousness if we think about it within the our spiritual lives our lives by which we desire to know these things and by which it means something for us. And so the claim of the transatlogy as well as ultimately of Christianity is that we do this because of a calling to understand God through the world in which we live and breathe and dance and desire to know God more fully to know ourselves by knowing God.

[00:38:06]And I would argue that in a way similar to a suggestion made by Tertullian that God must be material if God is to become man that we must investigate the world of nature and indeed all of the arts and sciences in order to come to know what God is more fully as the author of the book of nature or of the world by which we come to know him through natural means. So origin expresses this in his description of what he calls the solommonic sciences. He believed that King Solomon was given the gift of wisdom and by that also given the first art of philosophy that the Greeks subsequently learned from. But he interestingly distinguished the the art of physics from the art of ethics and what he called apoptics or the mystical science of theology. He thought that physics was a preparatory study for theology that you couldn't you couldn't ultimately know of what God was or how we come to know as were invisible mysteries except in so far as we begin by starting with that which is most immediate to the senses and by which we understand through our senses and through the world that which we approach them. This is also famously upheld by Thomas Aquinus and Albertus Magndus by arguing that we must start with the order of thought that is mortal cogniz that which is simplest to our understanding before we can approach that which is highest as the principles of being itself.

[00:39:16]Yeah.

[00:39:17]>> Yeah. So, I'm connecting it to some of the things more materialist in order to be more Christian.

[00:39:24]>> Yeah.

[00:39:26]Yeah. Well, I think >> um I mean contrast that perhaps to maybe like a more I I I think the term monist can get misused and some and I think someone like David Bentley Hart is so monist that he loops back to dignifying the world. you can because it's it's so one that the division between one and many is itself overcome by this oneness right um but I do think some more you know absolute monist ontologies that don't make that move end up having to say this world and time and the differences of the physical are all illusions and that you know something more fundamental and one and unified is what's actually real and I mean that's kind of a gnostic kind of move and that makes sense how that kind of ontology really would negate the goodness of this physical world in an inevitable way if you start with that.

[00:40:21]>> When Jesus tells the apostles that he has taught them in parables, but that he will teach them what is true. He doesn't deny that the parables are a vehicle for learning of that which is true. He doesn't deny that that what we know and feel and how we experience it within our within Palestine of the first century is something that is entirely elucery. He presents it as though it has impacting meaning and it shows people what could be true even if only in figures that point to something higher than themselves. So I I hope that the incarnation that is if if God really became man in the person of Jesus, he must also become man truly in his humanity. That is his body as a figure of meaning was not false. It was a way of showing us not only the truth of the divine embodiment as a human but also what it could mean about how we can become like God. that is um I think we ultimately lapse into a kind of notorian space of imagination when we think that that the world is elucery in the same way that we might imagine that the incarnation was elucery or that Jesus's body was only a kind of a kind of hologram for some kind of divine presentation. And all of that I think is deeply inhuman. It it it actually denies to us the the full richness of our humanity because it treats our own embodiment as though it were merely a passing stage to some higher plateau that could only perhaps be reached by sort of disembodiment. Whether it be returning to what we were before we were born or what what comes after.

[00:41:38]>> Yeah. Yeah. Well, a lot of this I'm throwing this question out of the blue at you. I don't think this was what I said you ahead of time, but um a lot of this trinitarian ontology because of its radical orthodoxy involvement. I mean, it's not exclusively RORO, but I mean a lot of it's in contrast to secular material nihilistic ontologies.

[00:41:59]something I'm really interested in, especially um as the world gets more integrated over coming centuries. I know there's been a bit of a recent push back against globalism, but hopefully uh I I do think that the world's coming closer in a way. Um and I wonder if I wonder what what role does a trinitarian ontology have to play in these conversations with you know a Hindu I I mean there isn't one Hindu ontology that's you know but uh with all of these other types of ontologies especially and I mean use the Hindu example but ontology is kind of at the heart of so much of what's going on there like these conversations these differing views of oneness in some ways they've made explicit uh a lot of the things that um sometimes get unsaid in our ontologies.

[00:42:46]I'm wondering where do you see neutrinitarian ontologies playing into this more global world religions kind of conversation moving forward? Like what is there something that we have to uniquely offer? Is there something perennial that we're coming together with some other movement about? Like where do you see this playing out in coming centuries as as different religions collide all the more?

[00:43:08]>> Well, that's a really question and hugely pregnant for future possibilities. So I take it that in a certain sense this question has been interrogated many many times in the past. So for instance in the debate between pfery and origin in the debate between uh virtual debate between Dianius and procalus or maximus confessor and and furthermore in the missionary endeavors of early modern explorers of Jesuit missions to India and China these kind of debates were raised and they continue to be a topic of interest and source of um discontent and and um fertive engagement for missionary societies thereafters. But I I think it that what you're pointing to is that we now have a shared a shared arena of debate that previously didn't exist even 10 years ago. And and here's why. So not only do we have rapid high-speed internet connection across the globe that's become almost ubiquitous, we're probably in the next 10 years going to have sort of streamed Wi-Fi from satellite sources that will connect us instantaneously. And we may even have neural link updates to be able to connect to Twitter continuously. We also have translation services will make the barriers of language fall to pieces for most purposes and all of that means that we could now be engaged in the global conversation the way that was not easily possible even for our parents and all of that raises the serious questions to the for in a way and I think one of the reasons for the revival of interest in Christianity even at a cultural level is that those conversations are no longer shuttered behind church doors anymore you don't have to go to the missionary society or you don't have to talk to the pastor on the street you can in the quiet sort of mornings you can listen to podcasts and you can you can watch debates online and you can really explore your own religious questions with the leading authors and people who are raising these questions at the highest level. So that's all very exciting. But I I think it also means that we have a greater responsibility now to answer to the questions of historic religious difference that could otherwise have been held at an arms length. We we we don't have to say that um as the medievals did that the Muhammadans they they live in the Far East and maybe only in Spain do we really have to have these kind of debates anymore. Now it's everywhere and it's something that is of urgent importance for us to answer. Now the reason I think transanttology is hugely beneficial for that is because it asks Christians not just to rely upon dogmatic statements of the church councils of the past or even authoritative theologians. You cannot just say Thomas Aquaintus said this, Carl Bar said this, the council of the church said this because that will as Thomas recognized that will not persuade someone who doesn't recognize those authorities. Rather, we have to find a way to translate the dogmatic statements of the church in ways that can be philosophically understood, even while recognizing that no philosophical account has continued legitimacy unless it's instituted by a community of practice that recalls and renews its tradition. So we have to find a way to think intelligently about these issues as best as it's been done in the past and as best as it can be done today recognizing the difficulty of that while at the same time exploring it with energy and devotion that can be attentive to the challenges that we find in our new global conversation and I hope that the trinitarian conference which welcomed guests from almost every inhabited continent I believe uh will be the start of that and we'll see many more fruits of that conversation yet to come.

[00:46:02]Well, and I I know that like uh Radical Orthodoxy started as a conference that turned into a book and then just expanded from there. What What are you hoping what are we hoping for new trinitarian ontologies, man? It was a conference, now it's a book. Where where is it going, bud?

[00:46:16]>> Well, it's, as you remember, it started at the Anchor Pub on the Cam River in Cambridge. So, little big things have small beginnings. Yeah. The kingdom of heaven was built on a mustard seed. But I I'm so excited by people who have taken up the cause of trantology. So I knew from the beginning that what we were doing was only a kind of chariot for for new avenues of exploration, new ways of thinking and perhaps that we be have to be uh the horses would have to be taken up by future scholars and future generations of students. And I'm excited for the work that's been done at the trim conference in Olamus led by Edward Feedler. I'm excited for the ongoing work of Pier Okoda and Julia Maspero in Florence and Rome. I'm excited for the work that's being done by Marcus Enders at the University of Freeberg and also continual interest by anglophone scholars in Cambridge and Oxford, Nottingham, Notre Dame, many other places. And I'm hoping that the MEX Institute for the Study of theology and Philosophy here in Austin, Texas will carry that light even further. and that the work that we're doing to engage with diverse topics whether it be Katarina Koozoba's the cut of the real non-f philosophy critique of Butler or political theology and Leo Strauss or gender and sexuality and Gregory of Nissa Jesuit cybernetics engaging with the development of computational theories with Yukui. These are the kind of inquiries that will allow for us to continue to rediscover the mystery of the trinity as a source of fire and inspiration for our imagination and those of future generations.

[00:47:35]>> Okay. Well, all that said, last question to close us.

[00:47:40]This is very technical. This is very academic. We even said the Trinity often gets excluded from discussions because it's just so complicated. Why should non-academics care about this topic?

[00:47:52]>> I think everyone should care about theology. That is, I don't I don't think that theology is the preserve of one profession or another. It's not as though the person who has a chair of philosophy at Notre Dame is more authentic to the desire of their heart to know their purpose and place in life than the homeless man on the street. And in fact, you might find that the homeless men on the street have more to say and are more devotedly interested in this than many of our white collar professionals or our ivory towered academics. So I hope that anyone who's interested in knowing who they are, where they've come from, how they found themselves in this place, why is it that Christians talk about the Trinity, what is that question that it raises about the relationality of being, about how being where we are and who we are opens up in ecstasies of love that invite a response from another. I hope that kind of questioning will elicit the interest and desire of people across the world and that it should be as much of an interest to the person who's never put a theology in the pews as it is to your Paris priest or pastor. Not that everyone will deeply engage with it because obviously, you know, there's a bit of a learning curve here, but it's a learning that I hope that we're inviting other people to share in and that we're making accessible for the first time in an exciting way to younger generations and to audiences that perhaps have never asked these questions before and show them that that an immense amount of labor and devotion has been undertaken by from millennia of theologians, but also by some of our great living voices and younger generations to share with them this line of investigation and discovery for the first time.

[00:49:19]>> Awesome. Well, thanks for so so much for coming on uh Dr. Hacker. I we'll have to have you back to so you and I can hash out that Twitter battle we were having about analogy and the trinity and reason a while back. Uh so um but yeah, thank you so much for coming. The book is New Trinitarian Ontologies Volume 1, edited by John Milbank, our Dr. Ryan Hacker, and by myself. So check it out. It's available now. And uh yeah, and if you if you saw this and you like this everybody, we've also got an interview with the other editor, John Milbank, uh that is up as well. So definitely check that out and like and subscribe for more content like this. So all the best.

[00:50:00]>> Thanks so much.