The Metaphysics of Love (and Short Break)

I am currently in the process of writing up a chapter as a follow up to my conference paper and facilitated Holy Week retreat on the metaphysics of Ferdinand Ulrich, whose thought is summarised by the maxim “Being is Nothing”, and the concept of “transnihilation”.

Listening to the responses I got from others who asked about this topic, one of the overlooked aspects of his metaphysics is the crucial role that love plays in the underwriting of all reality.

This was something that David L. Schindler wrote about in his book Ordering Love, in which creation, generated as it is by a God whose nature is love, imputes love not simply as an emotional state during the act of creation, but as a metaphysical characteristic underwriting all of the reality that creation inhabits, including the creature itself.

An important fallout of this metaphysics, and another dimension that David C. Schindler brings out in his Modern Theology article “Metaphysics as Prayer” - and one which I seek to bring out in this book chapter on the issue of identity - is what Ulrich called the “drama of being”, in which creatures do not exist as “static blocks”. Instead, the main characteristic of this drama is the creature creating space of the other in love. To put it in terms of identity then, one’s identity is not borne out of the preservation of this static block, but precisely in the kenotic act of creating space for that which is truly other for oneself. This is what Ulrich calls as the participation in a metaphysics of “Being given away”, which in turn participates in the divine creative act.

NB: As I will be on the road in the coming weeks, we will take a short break and return to regular posting in late July.