Towards a Trinitarian Ontology

Klaus Hemmerle has developed an ontology that starts from the Christian experience of the triune God entering human history. Through this event the meaning of existence has changed so that the classical ontology of substance or of absolute reflection does not adequately represent it. The new ontology can only be developed from the phenomenology of love. The process of love arises from several origins and is constituted on reference poles which correspond to each other analogically and whose identity is no longer a dead selfness but continuity through reciprocal exchange. This ontology permits a basic solution of problems that are insoluble in the classical ontology: the relationship between analysis and synthesis, between being and becoming, between necessity and freedom. In theology it elucidates the compatibility of God's supreme power with the free subsistence of creation. This trinitarian ontology, however, cannot serve as a "prime philosophy", because Christian experience is only possible through faith.

Keywords: Developing a new ontology; trinitarian ontology; Hemmerle; Klaus