Dualities: Theological/ontological
October 6th, 2008 by JohnO
There are several categories of duality: (1)Theological/ontological, (2)Thelogical/cosmological, (3)Moral, (4)Eschatalogical, (5)Theological/moral, (6)Cosmological, (7)Anthropological, (8)Epistemological, (9)Sectarian, and (10)Psychological. When we say dualities, we mean two opposite sides. And these categories are fairly atomistic, but vary greatly in the areas they cover. I hope to go over each of these in the context of Judaism, and therefore, Christianity in an effort to show what dualities fit with Jesus. We will start with Theological/ontological.
Theological/ontological duality. The postulation of heavenly beings other than the one god, even if these being exist at his behest and to do his will. The New Testament and the People of God, NT Wright, pg. 253
In Christianity it is clear that, to us, angels exist as heavenly beings, and do his bidding in several ways. We hold Theological/ontological dualism to be true. It is also widely seen within Judaism. We see it clearly in the early Pentateuch, and in the visions of the prophets. We also see it even more evident within “sectarian” literature like the dead sea scrolls.
In as much as we might say “Jesus is (in some sense) divine” (assuming we all agreed on a definition of “divine”) we must realize one thing.
…the postulation of supernatural beings other than the one god has nothing to do with a declining away from a ‘pure’ monotheism – or, if it does, we must say that we have very few examples of ‘pure’ monotheism anywhere, including in the the Hebrew Bible…
Thus it is that language about angels, about the Shekinah or ‘presence’ of Israel’s god, about Torah, about Wisdom, about the logos – all of these make their appearances, not as mere fantasy or speculative metaphysics, but as varied (and not always equally successful) attempts to perform a necessary theological task. ibid pg. 258
Saying that an angel is divine, or that Jesus (is now) divine in no way modifies belief in monotheism.I hope to take a walk through each of these ten dualities and outline them as such. In the hope that in the end we can make a statement for our own positions and what we should watch out for.