A Relational Ontology of the Divine and the Human

Individuation and Instantiation: A Relational Ontology of the Divine and the Human

1. The Need for a New Frame

The traditional creator–creature distinction casts the divine as an external agent and the human as a contingent product. This framing tends to obscure relational depth, flatten meaning-making, and treat individuality as derivative rather than essential. A more generative cosmology emerges when we reframe the divine–human relation in terms of meaning potential and its structured unfoldings.

2. The Divine as Collective Meaning Potential

We begin by identifying the divine not as a person or force, but as the totality of collective meaning potential—that is, the unbounded, shared system of possibilities from which meaning can be actualised. In a relational ontology, this divine ground is not an entity, but a field of potential relation, a system from which all construal emerges.

3. The Human as Individuation of the Divine

A human being is not an instance of the divine, but an individuation of it—a unique structuring of that shared potential. Individuation refers to the patterned subset of the whole system that each meaner manifests. Each human draws on the collective field, but in a distinct configuration, with its own construal pathways, semantic contours, and experiential resonances.

This perspective dissolves the binary of divine vs. human and replaces it with a recursive model: the human is not other than the divine, but a differentiated expression of it. This preserves both uniqueness and continuity.

4. Instantiation as Actualisation in Time

Where individuation is structural, instantiation is temporal. It refers to the actualisation of meaning in context—the moment a potential becomes a realised instance. A word spoken, a gesture made, a relation entered into: these are instantiations of an individual’s meaning potential, which is itself an individuation of the divine field.

Thus, when a human speaks, acts, or loves, they are not merely functioning within the world—they are instantiating the divine, through their individuated system of meaning.

5. Implications and Ethical Resonance

This ontology holds significant theological and ethical consequences:

• Relational theology: God is not a sovereign elsewhere, but the relational potential inherent in all things.

• Human dignity: Each person is not a derivative creation, but a structurally distinct actualisation of the divine field.

• Moral action: Ethics becomes the practice of instantiating one's individuated divine potential in ways that honour the field from which it arises.

• Diversity: No single instance or individuation can exhaust the potential; the divine is fully present only in the plural.

6. Conclusion

To be human is not to be separate from the divine, but to be a site where divine potential takes on a particular form. Meaning does not descend from the heavens; it emerges from within the relational field, instantiated by meaners who are themselves individuations of the field. This is not a theology of ascent, but a cosmology of expression.

The divine is not beyond us, but through us made actual.