3 - The new kenotic–perichoretic relational ontotheology: some “classical” concerns

Summary

It is time to retrace our steps. Looking back on chapter 2, we see that an “open panentheism” such as Clayton's has the capacity to weave the recovery of the Trinity and the relational turn into a new metaphysical system – ontotheology in a new key, as it were. Even many who stop short of embracing panentheism are now willing, even eager, to assert God's self-limitation for the sake of positing genuine relationships between God and finite but free human beings. Indeed, kenotic-relational ontotheology could lay strong claim to representing a “new orthodoxy,” such is its attractiveness to diverse streams of contemporary theology and potential for integration. The concept of relationality is notoriously ambiguous, however, covering a multitude of conceptual sins. Further, it is not altogether clear whether, or to what extent, a kenotic-relational panentheism is appropriately Trinitarian (i.e., able to preserve both the unity of the divine nature and the distinctness of the divine persons). As we have seen, the tendency in contemporary Trinitarian theologies is to inflate the Spirit and marginalize the Father; but this is as sub-orthodox as the early modern tendency to inflate the Father and marginalize the Spirit.

At the outset of the previous chapter I mentioned three issues that serve as touchstones by which to discern the difference between classical theism and alternative models of the God/world relation. What has become of God's personhood, love, and suffering in the new orthodoxy?