The ontological difference between the eastern and western churches is an idea (first?) proposed by the Ecumenical Patriarch in 1997, and has enjoyed a thriving time within the internet-seen1 debates between many a minor theologian online. E.g., this2 article by MWD, which is putatively a contribution to a dust-up about the Sacred Heart Devotion.
In it, MWD invokes the idea of ontological difference.
I’m not convinced by the idea, but I may be wrong.
To claim that the church traditions (say, I dunno, East and West) are ontologically different makes no immediate sense to me. Perhaps I need to brush up on my ontological metaphysics.3 What it does immediately suggest is a very strong feeling about their difference; “ontologically” does not seem to be deployed with any metaphysical accuracy, but with moral, firm hesitancy.4 It just means a very significant and insuperable difference between churches.
Has anyone considered the metaphysical implications of such a claim? Like, to the rocky bottom? What theological tradition began the view that there can be several different orthodox christian traditions? Is this a venerable vein of thought? Has any theologian vigorously defended the ontological plurality of Christ’s church, at least before 1997?5 Did he make it out alive?
Why is the language of the orthodox church and those heretical, diverging churches not invoked instead? It is out of a modern softness of thought?
How does ontological difference and the strict line between orthodoxy and heresy interact with each other? Is there a threshold, where the ontologically different drifts into heretically ontologically different?
What other areas of ontology must we re-examine after we have fully digested the view that the church can be ontologically different? Can truth be ontologically different? How about goodness? If so, can we work that out? I want to know when to call something false or when it’s proper to call something true but ontologically different from another truth. If not, what is special about ecclesial ontology whereby it’s ontological difference is not contagious for other realities like truth or goodness?
MWD writes:
Yet the Orthodox can’t help but agree with Patriarch Bartholomew I: that Catholics and the Orthodox are now “ontologically different.” We are not two lungs of the same body, but two bodies. We are not two branches of the same Church, but two separate churches. We are not two sides of the same coin, but two different coins.
Is it possible his claim still clings all too closely to the notion of ontological unity? Is it possible that one church is the lung of one body, and the other church is the bladder of another body? That one church is a coin and the other church is a bitcoin? Perhaps, when our thinking has matured, we will discover that one church is the blue cheese on a smash burger while the other church is the suspension limit strap in a souped-up 2003 Toyota Tacoma. Whatever it turns out to be, I think this discovery will be very useful for theologians in parsing out the symbolic form of the church(es).
Footnotes
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A pejoration of internecine. ↩
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Update (Dec. 2025º): it seems MWD has left Substack and took with him all his literary possessions. ↩
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Should I begin with Deleuze, that connoisseur of ontological difference, or with someone more even-keeled like Hegel? ↩
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“I don’t want to say they don’t exist; they just exist, you know, differently.” ↩
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Having trouble finding a .pdf of the speech in toto; will edit this if/when I find it. MWD’s article quotes the relevant part. ↩