No - it’s the other way round!

I was trying to grasp what Andrew was saying, to see if we can agree on what we (dis)agree on. That Andrew regards the collective as defining the individual while you say the opposite is part of the longstanding debate between you two. My issue has to do with the nature of Christian transformation as it occurs both individually and collectively. By invoking the word "ontological" (I probably meant "ontic") I unnecessarily confused matters that were already becoming clear. So I suggest we forsake the philosophical jargon for now.

In this discussion I was interested in exploring the nature of humanity and the self, the sheer thingness of being a human. The new creation, the new creature, the new man: do these terms refer to some fundamental and essential difference between kinds of human being, as if Christians are transformed into members of a species or race that’s essentially different from, and superior to, non-Christian humanity? Or is it that becoming Christian embeds ordinary biological humans in a different matrix of relationships and meanings and purposes? I was proposing that the latter is closer to what Andrew is talking about than the former. In my discussion with you on your post I thought we agreed on this as well without confusing one another by invoking ontology.

It’s certainly no small thing to arrive at this sort of agreement. Luther reached his irrevocable split with Rome over the matter of transubstantiation: after consecration do the bread and wine retain their material essence, or are they changed into some entirely different sort of substance, or are two fundamentally different kinds of substance present together in the elements? It’s a similar sort of longstanding discussion we’ve entered into here.

Regarding the debate about individual versus collective transformation, in this particular context the two are hard to separate. When a baby is born which comes first: her humanity or her individuality?