Luther’s Participative Ontology

Abstract

Distinguishing between a relational and participative ontology and highlighting the last like a paradigm of our time, the author shows how Luther uses both types of ontology for the explication of justification and how both express the same concept in different ways. The participative paradigm explains justification through the union between Christ and the believer and the following communicatio idiomatum. The author underlines that this is not a personal union, but that Christ and the believer become one body and that this union doesn’t change human nature but giving a person a new direction. The article closes with some ecumenical considerations of the participative ontology.