Embed Doc
Copy Link
Readcast
Collections

CommentGo Back

Download

CTC 403: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

CTC403: Theology after the Council: Theological Styles and SystemsAssessment Task 3: EssayTheology, idolatry and the caducity of being: a critical appraisal of

God without Being

by Jean-Luc Marion.

ηλλοξαν την δοξαν του αφθαρτου Θεου εν οµοιωµατι εικονος φθαρτου ανθρωτου.

(Romans 1:23)God

not at all … - Meister EckhartIf I were to write a theology … then the word ‘Being’ would not occur in it …- Martin Heidegger

The theological idoloclasm

of Jean-Luc Marion’s

God without Being

could bestyled, at least

prima facie

, as a striking component of a contemporary

vianegativa

. When Simone Weil wrote

God exists: God does not exist … I am sure there is a God in the sense that I am quitesure my love is not illusory. I am quite sure that there is not a God in the sense that I amquite sure nothing real can be anything like what I am able to conceive when Ipronounce the word …

she was reiterating the paradoxical insight of negative theology that positiveassertions about the

theos

must be false. Marion, however, is not so muchconcerned with the inherent shortcomings of positive theology as with afundamental re-evaluation of the whole theological enterprise. In spite of his

Jean-Luc Marion,

God without Being

, University of Chicago Press, 1991 (Originally publishedas

Dieu sans l’être: Hors-texte

, Librairie Arthème Fanyard, 1972), hereafter GWB.

A neologism justified by Marion’s phenomenology, see below.

Simone Weil,

Gravity and Grace: Atheism as a purification

, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972,p. 103

CTC 403: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

indebtedness to Patristic thinkers, as well as to neo-Patristic theologiansincluding Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac and Hans Urs von Balthasar, his(philosophical) point of departure is that

locus classicus

of contemporarynihilism, Friedrich Nietzsche’s (1844-1900)

The Gay Science

: ‘Wohin ist Gott?… Wir haben ihn getödtet – ihr und ich!’

Drawing upon Heidegger andHeidegger’s engagement with Nietzsche,

Marion argues that a Christianitygrounded on metaphysical theism is ultimately nihilistic. Ontological differenceand the very question of Being itself must be transcended if authentic religiousexperience and encounter is to take place.As soon as it appeared in translation in 1991, it was immediately clear that

God without Being

was going to be an important milestone in contemporarytheology and philosophy of religion. David Tracy played a major part inintroducing Marion, a Catholic professor of philosophy at the University of Nanterre, and his work to the English-speaking theological world. Marion’sacademic credentials are primarily those of a Descartes scholar. The seeds of one of Marion’s principal preoccupations, namely the difference between theidol and the icon, can be discerned in his observation that the gaze of Descartes’

cogito

exists in tension with a second gaze, namely that of God: itconflicts to the extent that it is independent; it harmonises to the extent that itis a reflection of the

causa sive ratio

of God. Gradually the contours of whathas become Marion’s central project have surfaced in his diverse philosophicaland theological writings. Essentially Marion wants to distinguish between twodifferent logics: that of metaphysical thinking, seen very much as a product of modernity, and that of theology with its priority of faith and God beyond Being.In this essay I will begin by explaining both Marion’s indebtedness toHeidegger and the grounds for Marion’s claims that Heidegger’s positive thesisregarding theology is inadequate. This will lead to a discussion of Marion’sphenomenology of the idol and the icon that both underpins his remarks aboutmetaphysical theology (‘theiology’) and ‘authentic’ theology and leads to the

‘Where has God gone? … We have killed him, you and I!’ Nietzsche,

Die fröhlicheWissenschaft (The Gay Science),

Section 125, 1882.

See Antonio Calcagno’s article at www.bu.edu/wep/Papers/Reli/ReliCalc

CTC 403: Assessment Task 3: Essay - Candidate number: V42326

establishment of his insightful sacramental (eucharistic) hermeneutic. Whileacknowledging the originality of much of his work, I will conclude byhighlighting some of the weaknesses that undermine the cogency of histhought.With an important qualification that I shall refer to later, Jean-Luc Marion’scritique of metaphysical theology is grounded on an understanding of theologythat was developed by Martin Heidegger. The most complete treatment of thenature of theology and its relation to ontology appears in Heidegger’s address

Phänomenologie und Theologie.

Heidegger maintained there were twopossible forms of science: the science of the beings (ontic science) and thescience of being (ontological science, further distinguished as regional andfundamental ontology). Ontic science investigates some region of what is(such as history, archaeology, biology and so on). Ontology investigates thebeing that is presupposed by these other sciences. Within the context of a pre-scientific grasp of the being of the thing, the positive-ontic sciences attempt tomake the thing

(the ‘positum’) thematic and objective while the (regional)ontology thematizes the understanding of the thing’s being. Following thisschema Heidegger classifies theology, not as an ontological scienceconcerned with (‘Holy’) Being, but as a positive-ontic science devoted to thepositum not, interestingly enough, of ‘God’, but of religious faith (

der Glaube

)or ‘Christianness’ (

die Christlichkeit

). More precisely,

Christlichkeit

refers to theoriginating experience that makes Christianity possible, namely faith in ‘Christ,the crucified God’.

Heidegger’s position allows him to assert that the ‘God’ of metaphysics is notthe God of faith. To the extent that the God of metaphysics has becomesubstituted in Christianity for the God of faith, the cry of Nietzsche’s madmanthat God is dead and that we have killed him has both prophetic and evensalvific overtones. As Laurence Paul Hemming observes, ‘For Heidegger, to

This address was held originally in Tübingen in 1927 and again in Marburg in 1928. It was firstprinted in 1969 in the

Archives de Philosophie

and as a separate text in 1970.

Phänomenologie und Theologie

, 52