Boursma's Sacramental Ontology

 from Hans Boursma, "Heavenly Participation"

<A sacramental ontology insists that not only does the created world point to God as its source and ‘point of reference,’ but that it also subsists or participates in God. A participatory or sacramental ontology will look to passages such as Acts 17:28, (“For in him we live and move and have our being, As some of your own poets have said, “We are his offspring.” ) and will conclude that our being participates in the being of God. Such an outlook on reality will turn to Colossians 1:27 (“He [Christ] is before all things, and in him all things hold together”) and will argue that the truth goodness and beauty of all created things is grounded in Christ, the eternal Logos of God. In other words, because creation is a sharing in the being of God, our connection with God is a participatory, or real connection—not just an external, or nominal connection.

Few people have expressed this distinction better than C.S. Lewis has: “We do not want merely to see beauty, though God knows, even that is bounty enough. We want something else which can hardly be put into words—to be united with the beauty we see, to pass into it, to receive it into ourselves, to bathe in it, to become part of it.” (The Weight of Glory) We do not want merely a nominal relationship; we desire a participatory relationship. In fact, a sacramental ontology maintains that the former is possible only because the covenanting partners are not separated or fragmented individuals. " (pp. 24-25)

https://www.amazon.com/Heavenly-Participation-Weaving-Sacramental-Tapestry/dp/0802865429