On the Foundation of the Distinction Between Teology Teolog y and Philosophy Philosophy JEAN�LUC MARION UNIVERSIY OF PARIS�SORBONNE �PARIS IV�, FRANCE UNIVERSIY OF CHICAGO, U.S.A.
Te Conflict o the Faculties
he question o philosophy and o its being taught in the university always leads to the question o the reedom o inquiry. inquiry. Like any other discipline, philosophy can unold only under the condition o its reedom; and even more so than any other discipline, because it does not dispose, like the other disciplines, o an object determined by a method that would constitute it, but must each time build a road on which to march. It remains remains that philosophy is taught taught and developed only within the ramework o institutions, particularly o universities. How can such an institution allow, tolerate, even guarantee such an unconditional reedom as the condition condition o everything? How can philosophy demand this without putting into question the institution to which it nevertheless belongs and without entering into conflict with other disciplines? Tis danger appears appears clearly when philosophy philosophy comes into contact—like two tectonic plates—with theology, which not only cannot not admit a normative authority (that o the revealed datum and, only then, that o the ecclesial Magisterium) but which can hardly avoid the temptation (or the duty) to impose its own norms and results on other disciplines, and first o o all on philosophy. philosophy. What Kant Kant called the conflict o the aculties (between theology, law, and medicine on the one hand and philosophy on the other) in act goes back to the very ver y oundation o the universities which immediately provoked provoked a conflict between the aculty o theology and the aculty o arts and 1 & 2 & 3
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which cuts through the whole history o the university even to our day: one o the most decisive dividing lines among university systems in the world today passes between universities which have always had a aculty o theology and those which have suppressed suppressed it. Evidently Evidently,, the conflict between aculties is noticeable above all in universities which have kept the two aculties alongside each other, and thus primarily in Catholic universities. universities. Catholic universities universities paradoxically appear appear to be the privileged site o the conflict always possible between philosophy and theology. Te popular interpretation o this conflict amounts to an opposition o the aculty o philosophy, which would deend the rights o reason (or at least that o rationality), against the aculty o theology, which would deend the rights o aith aith and indeed o the Revelation. Tere is an additional variable in that the rontline could pass even within the aculty o theology: between the so called scientific disciplines (exegesis, church history, history, etc…) etc…) and the speculative disciplines. Moreo Moreover ver,, the rontline can pass within the speculative disciplines themselves: between the conservative positions and the progressive avant-garde, etc…. One can admit, ollowing ollowing above all the authority authority o Kant, as as a necessary evil, that “the conflict between the superior aculties [here, theology] and the inerior aculty [philosophy] will first o all be inevitable, but, and secondly, that it will also be legal ,” ,” and even “that it cannot be stopped,” because “the aculty o philosophy can never lay down its arms in ront o the danger that threatens truth, the protection o which is entrusted to philosophy, philosophy, because the superior aculties will never abdicate their claim to dominate.” 1 Let us recognize that, more ofen than not and even in Catholic C atholic universities, once we discuss the “reedom o inquiry” beore the authority o the Magisterium, we reason out like Kantians o the strict observance. obser vance. Our argument, however however,, will not be to take one side or the other in this conflict and not even to attempt, afer so many others, a mediation. It will be to interrogate interrogate ourselves ourselves on the very terms o the relation between philosophy and theology: it could in act be the Immanuel Kant, Te Conflict o the Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten), Fakultäten), trans. with an introduction by Mary J. Gregor (Lincoln: University o Nebraska Press, 1979), I.1.4, pp. 53 and 55. [ranslator’s note: In this instance, we have have translated rom the French translation cited by the author. author. Te source or the English translation cited here is provided or the benefit o the reader who wishes to consult the ull text.] 1
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case that the lack o precision o these concepts, indeed the conusion in the definitions, not only orbids any clarification o obscurities, but constitutes in act the heart o the problem, nobody knowing exactly what he is deending deending and against against what. For the conflict o o the aculties supposes that one identifies, to begin with, what one opposes in order to then clearly determine the difference between the disciplines. Now Now,, this difference, most o the time and first o all, is ound supposedly known and presuppos presupposed ed without ambiguity. ambiguity. We will show on the contrary that this is no longer evident today because the contem contemporary porary situation o philosophy—that o the “end o metaphysics” and the radical possibilities that it opens up to thought 2—renders problematic or even obsolete the criteria which w hich up to now have been retained or rigorously distinguishing philosophy and theology, and then eventually or describing the supposed conflict. It could be that, with the loss o these usual criteria o their differentiation, the conflict itsel becomes obsolete and a totally different relationship is sketched between them.
Brie Historical Remarks Beore any conceptual discussion, it is appr appropriate opriate to recall two historical acts that t hat underlie the question that we have just introduced. We must remember first o all that Christian thought, when it ound itsel charged with exposing, rendering credible, and thereore conceptualizing the Revelation o God in Jesus Christ, did not have recourse to the term theology . Tis term came rom propositions concerning the divine proffered by poets and the first Greek thinkers, doubly mortgaged first o all by the indeterminate acceptance o the gods and gods and o the divine, divine, with which the designation o the one incommensurable God o the biblical Revelation absolutely broke off; and then o the uncritical assumption o being able to say anything whatsoever about God, God, whereas the God G od o Revelation not only proves to be unsayable and unnameable as such, but paradoxically exercises or himsel the unction o the λόγος and, in speaking o himsel, thus imposes a theo -logy beore the least theo-logy. theo-logy.3 It is in this sense that theo-logy Regarding this point, see our study on “Te ‘End o Metaphysics’ as a Possibility,” trans. Daryl Lee, in Religion afer Metaphysics, Metaphysics, ed. Mark A. Wrathall (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 165-89. 3 o the “theologia, “theologia, quasi sermo de de Deo Deo – – theology, as it were, talk about God,” God,” (St. 2
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Dionysius will end up reintroducing the term when, in making use o affirmative and negative “theologies,” he reers to and repeats the names that God himsel uses in his regard in the Scriptures (obviously in a manner different rom any kind o Neoplatonism). We will have to wait until Abelard and even the constitution o theologia as a science by St. Tomas or the term to find itsel definitively received by Christian usage. Tat or twelve centuries, and precisely during those centuries when it orged its most decisive concepts (concepts which underlie our discourse even today), Christian thought had almost ignored, that is to say did not really need, the term theologia, should at least surprise us and put us on guard against the assurance that the concept o “theology” is a matter o course. How can such a long absence o theologia in the history o “theology” not continue to determine its status today? Te reticence with regard to the term theologia, or example on the part o St. Augustine, indeed leads us, i we examine the reasons, to another surprise: that o the equivalence between theology and philoso phy . When in act he mentions the minimalist definition: “Teologiam pertinent, quo verbo græco significari intelligimus de divinitate rationem, sive sermonem – Teology, a Greek term by which we understand to signiy reasoning or discourse concerning divinity,”4 it is not yet a Tomas Aquinas, Summa theologiæ Ia, q.1, a.7, sed contra) one can contrast a more original sermo ab Deo whose “ad nos revelatio divina processit — divine revelation has come down to us.” (Summa theologiæ Ia, q.1, a.2, ad 2) [English translation: Summa Teologiæ, vol. 1, Christian Teology (Ia.1), ed. and trans. Tomas Gilby, O.P. (Cambridge, UK: Blackriars, 1964). [ranslator’s note: in all quotations rom St. Tomas Aquinas, all emphases are those o the author.] 4 St. Augustine, Te City o God against the Pagans, ed. and trans. Robert W. Dyson (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), VIII.1.34, p. 312 [translator’s note: as with the first ootnote, the translation has been modified], echoing a definition o “sapientia” by Cicero: “Sapientiam esse rerum divinarum et humanarum scientiam cognitionemque – Wisdom is the knowledge o things divine and human” in usculan Disputations, with an English translation by John Edward King (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), IV.26.57, pp. 392-3 and: “Illa autem sapientia, quam principem dixi, rerum est divinarum et humanarum scientia, in qua continetur deorum et hominum communitas et societas inter ipsos – Again, that wisdom which I have given the oremost place is the knowledge o things human and divine, which is concerned also with the bonds o union between gods and men and the relations o man to man.” in De Officiis, with an English translation by Walter Miller (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975), I.43.153, pp. 156-7 or ibid., II.2.5, pp. 172-3. Te catalogue o reerence has been drawn up by Goulven Madec, Saint Augustin et la philosophie. Notes critiques (Paris: Institut d’études augustiniennes, 1996), particularly chapter 2, which
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question here o what the moderns will name theologia in its double (even opposite) meanings: either the knowledge o Revelation or the other theologia rationalis, which, as one o the parts o the metaphysica specialis, is in turn ramed by the metaphysica generalis (or ontologia).5 It is a question here o something much less than that. It only alludes to the usage in act proposed by Varro: “ria genera theologiæ dicit esse, id est rationis quæ de diis explicatur, eorumque unum mythicon appellari, alterum physicon, tertium civile… – He says that there are three classes o theology, that is to say o reason urnishing explanations concerning the gods: the one mythical, the other physical (and by this philosophers speaking o nature and the heavenly movements), and the third political,”6 in other words the theologia o the poets narrating stories about the gods, that o the philosophi considering the movements o the stars, and that o the priests celebrating the cult o the city.7 St. Augustine does not accept to be the “theologian” o any o the first two theologiæ, that o the poets (whose ridiculous and immoral ables are a calumny o the divinity), and that o the city (purely political, or reflecting the ideological claims o the city). It thereore remains to consider only “theologia naturalis, quæ non huic tantum [sc. Varron] , sed multis philosophis placuit – the natural theology that was suitable not only to Varro, but to a number o philosophers.” 8 Tis privilege holds on to the act that it is a question o this part o philosophy (physics, or more exactly cosmology) that defines what in nature, indeed in its regular heavenly movements, most closely approximates the divine immutability. And, thereore, since only philosophers reach this narrow but real rationality, Christian thought (what today we call theology) can only discuss with these philosophers and never with the other “theologies” (which are empty o all rationality) o the pagans: we ollow essentially. 5 See inra, note 13. 6 St. Augustine, City o God VI.5.1, p. 246. [translation modified] 7 Varro, Antiquitates rerum divinarum libri I-II ragmenta, ed. Augusta Germana Condemi (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1965), vol. 1, pp. 9, 10, 14, 16 and 17 (ragments 10, 14, 23, 28 and 29, respectively) reproducing City o God VIII.1, VII.6, VI.5 and VI.6. Even the ormulation “[theologia] naturali, quæ philosophorum est – natural theology which belongs to the philosophers” (City o God VI.8.2, p. 256) reers to the discourse on di vinity on the basis o nature, that is to say o cosmology such as Varro understands it, and evidently without anticipating in any way the metaphysica specialis. 8 St. Augustine, City o God VII.6, p. 276. [translation modified]
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“Non cum quibuslibet hominibus…; sed cum philosophis est habenda collatio. – Te conrontation must not take place with just about anybody… but with philosophers.”9 Tus, in a strict sense, that is to say in the sense in which he himsel understood it, St. Augustine does not, except in a very marginal way, work as a theologian: strictly speaking, he would rather admit doing the work o a philosopher, in the strict sense o an amator Dei. Tus concludes the discussion: “Verus philosophus est amator Dei. – Te true philosopher is the one who loves God.”10 Obviously, this meaning o philosophy has nothing or very little in common with the contemporary use o the term. Tis nevertheless remains a act, and a act which has persisted as long as the use o philosophia christiana could designate the monastic lie, and, more generally, the properly Christian way o lie (that is to say at least until Erasmus).11 Tus, not only does the term theologia not always define the exercise o thinking out the Revelation, but philosophia can be substituted or it, by virtue o its obvious meaning o love o wisdom and, thereore, o the author and o the site o Wisdom. In this context, the conflict o the aculties is no longer a matter o course just as the very definitions o the opposing aculties are no longer a matter o course. Reciprocally, the antagonism between theologia and philosophia implies that a rivalry can make them oppose each other, a rivalry implying in turn a common ground o conrontation. Historically, these conditions were not obtained beore the intellectual climate o his Ibid., VIII.1, p. 312. [translation modified] Tis point has been strongly underlined by Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, “Te ruth o Christianity?” in ruth and olerance: Christian Belie and World Religions, trans. Henry aylor (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), pp. 165-72. 10 St. Augustine, VIII.1, p. 312. [translation modified] Tis remains in proound harmony with a more ancient position, that o St. Justin: “So, among the non-Hellenic peoples, those who are and those who seem to be wise all have the one common name—they are all named Christians.” in Writings o Saint Justin Martyr , trans. Tomas B. Falls (New York: Christian Heritage, Inc., 1948), Apology I.7, p. 40; and also ibid., XXVI.6, p. 63. See Daniel Bourgeois, La sagesse des anciens dans le mystère du verbe. Évangile et philosophie chez saint Justin, philosophe et martyr (Paris: équi, 1981). 11 Étienne Gilson goes even all the way up to Calvin: “the ‘Christian philosophy’ o Calvin is a purely supernatural knowledge; in a word it is a theology.” in “Nature and Philosophy,” in Christianity and Philosophy , trans. Ralph MacDonald, C.S.B. (New York: Sheed and Ward Inc., 1939), p. 18. On this syntagma, see Gustave Bardy, “‘Philosophie’ et ‘philosophe’ dans le vocabulaire chrétien des premiers siècles,” Revue d’ascétique et de mystique 25 (1949), pp. 97-108. 9
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time led St. Tomas Aquinas to make two genial but very particular decisions. First o all, that o articulating together under the title o metaphysica three sciences lef unconnected by Aristotle: first o all the prima philosophia which “considers the first causes o things” (thus in the end God), then the metaphysica in a narrower sense “which considers ens (what is) and what ollows rom it,” and finally the scientia divina sive theologia which considers the separated substances (thus in the first place God).12 Tese three sciences will culminate, in a fixed orm rom Suarez to Kant (and beyond), in what will reign under the title o the system o metaphysics: the metaphysica treating (first o all as metaphysica generalis and then under the later title o ontologia) o ens in quantum ens (what is insoar as it is, being as being); the prima philosophia unolding in a triple metaphysica specialis which includes (beside cosmologia rationalis and psychologia rationalis) what will then take the name o theologia rationalis.13 It is this discipline’s task to treat St. Tomas Aquinas, “Proœmium,” in In duodecim libros Metaphysicorum Aristotelis Expositio. [English translation: “Prologue,” in Commentary on the Metaphysics o Aristotle, trans. John P. Rowan (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1961), vol. 1, pp. 1-2.] 13 On the contrary meanings o theology as metaphysica specialis in contrast with the theologia o Revelation, see our brie clarifications in “Téo-logique,” in André Jacob (ed.), Encyclopédie philosophique universelle, vol. 1, “L’Univers philosophique,” (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1989), pp. 17-25 and in Being Given: oward a Phenomenology o Givenness (Stanord, CA.: Stanord University Press, 2002), pp. 71 ff., as well as Olivier Boulnois, Duns Scot: La rigueur de la charité (Paris: Éditions du Cer, 1998), chapter 3.. For a comprehensive history o the constitution o metaphysics in metaphysica generalis and metaphysica specialis (including theologia rationalis), see, in addition to On Descartes’s Metaphysical Prism: Te Constitution and Limits o Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Tought , trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Chicago and London: Te University o Chicago Press, 1999), chapter 1, and “La science toujours recherchée et toujours manquante,” in La métaphysique. Son histoire, sa critique, ses enjeux , ed. Jean-Marc Narbonne and Luc Langlois (Paris: J. Vrin, 1999), pp. 13-36, the dossier o Jean-François Courtine, Suarez et le système de la métaphysique (Paris: Presses Uni versitaires de France, 1990), on the basis o the works o Hans Reiner, “Die Enstehung und ursprüngliche Bedeutung des Namens ‘Metaphysik’,” Zeitschrif ür philosophische Forschung 8 (1954), pp. 210-37 and Ernst Vollrath, “Die Gliederung der Metaphysik in eine Metaphysica generalis und eine Metaphysica specialis,” Zeitschrif ür philoso phische Forschung 16, no. 2 (April-June 1962), pp. 258-84, then in Die Tese der Meta physik. Zur Gestalt der Metaphysik bei Aristoteles, Kant und Hegel (Wuppertal: Henn Verlag, 1969). — Te Heideggerian background o this question has been treated in God Without Being: Hors-exte, trans. Tomas A. Carlson, with a oreword by David racy (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 1991), chapters 2 and 3. 12
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o God, whatever he may be, by means o pure reason, that is to say to eventually demonstrate his existence (by way o proos) and to define his essence (by defining his attributes). It is only in this ramework that philosophy allows God to enter within its field, that is to say within the system o metaphysics. Without the erection o such a system, God, in particular the God o Revelation, would escape rom philosophy—which does not signiy that even with this system God as such becomes accessible to it. No one understood and emphasized this better than St. Tomas because he distinguishes as clearly as possible the two meanings o theologia (“Sic ergo theologia sive scientia divina est duplex. – Tus, theology or divine science is twoold.”). On the one hand, the theology which philosophers developed (also called metaphysics) considers the divine things but uniquely as principles o their knowledge, and not as objects o this knowledge (“res divinæ non tamquam subjectum scientiæ, sed tamquam principia subjecti”). Revelation remains as the principle o their study without them being able, through pure reason, to reach it as the direct object o their study. On the other hand and by contrast, the divine things in themselves become a direct object o study only or the believing reason, which has access to it through aith in the Scriptures themselves as the direct object o understanding: “ Alia vero [theologia], quæ ipsas res divinas considerat propter seipsas ut subjectum scientiæ, et hæc est theologia, quæ in sacra Sciptura traditur. – But o another sort is that theology which considers divine things on their own account as the very subject matter o its science. Tis is the theology taught in sacred Scriptures.”14 Tus must we distinguish and even oppose two theologies: the theologia philosophica indirectly connected to the revealed God (as the principle o its ob ject), henceorth destined to be integrated as theologia rationalis in the system o metaphysics, against the theologia vero sacræ Scripturæ [true theology o sacred Scriptures], directly connected to the God o Revelation (as its object), henceorth maintaining its distance to the whole St. Tomas Aquinas, Expositio super librum Boethii De rinitate q.5, a.4, resp. [English translation: Te rinity and Te Unicity o the Intellect , trans. Sr. Rose Emmanuella Brennan, S.H.N. (St. Louis, MO: B. Herder Book Co., 1946), p. 164. ranslation modified.] See: “Teologia quæ ad sacram doctrinam pertinet differt secundum genus ab illa theologia quæ pars philosophiæ ponitur. – Te theology o holy teaching differs in kind rom that theology which is ranked as a part o philosophy.” (Summa theologiæ Ia, q.1, a.1, ad 2) [English translation: ibid ., vol. 1] 14
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system o metaphysics. In this context, and in this context alone, can the two instances be distinguished rom, be opposed to, and eventually conront one another. Tis was rapidly the case with the Protestant Reormation. Tis was not the case beore the medieval restoration, first o all Tomist, o Christian thought (as non-theology) o the first centuries and o the Patristic period, which ignored the twoold nature o the two theologiæ that supposedly had the same interest at stake. Te question o the distinction between these two knowledges o God has a history. It is not eternal and is thereore not a matter o course.
Criteria or Distinguishing rom the Point o View o Philosophy We now reach the conceptual question: Which criteria are available to us or distinguishing (thus eventually opposing) what are today named under the titles philosophy and theology? We will try to examine them in assuming first o all the philosophical point o view, as it is only appropriate in a colloquium organized by a gathering o aculties o philosophy. A first criterion results directly rom the establishment o the system o metaphysics. Every science depends on the metaphysica generalis, specifically ontologia, insoar as it treats o an object which, obviously, must first o all be, o a being, o ens. Tis claim is also valid or each o the special metaphysics, hence first o all or the God o theologia rationalis; thus metaphysics examines God rom the angle o his existence (and their proos) and then his essence. But this is also valid or what the theologia sacræ Scripturæ [theology o sacred Scriptures] can claim to say o God in its own way. Te events o the biblical narrative must be: they must be validated ollowing the claims o the science o history, they must be attested in the texts ollowing the rules o philology (the literal sense always being preeminent), etc…. Te two theologies will thereore be subordinated to ontology, the difference being determined by the positivity, more or less accentuated, o the beings (des étants) concerned and, thereore, by the empirical character o ontic verifications. In act, this differentiation by subordination, though stemming directly rom the system o metaphysics, survives it and extends its effects in many ways. Without evoking the “positivity” o Revelation, ollowing Schelling, one finds almost the same thing in 1 & 2 & 3
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Heidegger who, in 1928, still considered theology (non-philosophical as well as philosophical) as an “entirely ontic autonomous science” by virtue o its “positivity,” and, as such, as dependent on the analytic o Dasein, which, as undamental ontology, assumes even more the primacy o ontologia. 15 It can also be suggested that the whole enterprise o demythologization undertaken by Bultmann rests on the subordination o theology, even and above all revealed theology, to a narrow determination o modern rationality (in act as technique) established as an uncritical substitute or ontologia. Fundamentally, this hardly differs rom the contemporary assumptions o Carnap, who assumed the logical critique o language as a quasi ontologia (curiously meant to undo what he imagined under the title o metaphysics). All these attempts, undertaken since then, to rectiy theology in the name o the supposed authority o each o the now deunct “social sciences” (linguistics, psychoanalysis, sociology, literary theory, gender studies, etc…) are essentially limited to reproducing the same tactics, only with weaker and weaker substitutes and less and less critical substitutes o ontologia. Tis criterion o distinction by subordination is exercised so oten and so much that one is not able to contest its power. It remains that this power rests on a serious and, thereore, ragile presupposition: the distinction between the ontological and ontical sciences obviously supposes an incontestable ontologia or at least a credible avatar o ens in quantum ens [being as being, what is insoar as it is]. Tenceorth, one can seriously doubt that a philosophy in a position to claim or itsel the status o an ontology, o a universal science o being (l’étant ), can be ound today. Certainly, we do not lack claims or mastering or restoring ontology—in particular within the analytical and neoTomistic traditions—but without them being able to redefine being (l’étant ) (supposing that one can surpass its irreducible undefinability in metaphysics rom Duns Scotus to Hegel), without them also being Martin Heidegger, “Phenomenology and Teology,” trans. James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo, in Pathmarks, ed. William McNeill (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1998), pp. 50-4. A text which Heidegger reers very logically back to Being and ime, which includes theology among biology, sociology, etc… within the sciences o phenomena which phenomenology itsel dominates and constitutes (ibid ., p. 39). See Martin Heidegger, Being and ime: A ranslation o Sein und Zeit, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University o New York Press, 1996), §7, pp. 24-5. 15
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able to resolve the contradiction o its final equivalence with a cogitabile [what-can-be-thought], or even mastering the primacy o the concept in the conceptus entis. I Heidegger himsel had to renounce his project o maintaining ontology even under the figure o a Fundamentalontologie, i he ended up not only abandoning all use o the term metaphysica precisely in order “to think to be (l’être) without what is (l’étant ), which signifies thinking to be (l’être) without consideration o all metaphysics,”16 i he had, in a sense, even turned his back on being (l’être) in avor o Ereignis in which “it disappears,”17 which philosopher today can still, while thinking what he said, make a claim or ontology in order to subordinate to it the theology o Revelation or even a philosophical theology, i there is still one? Otherwise posited, an ontology (and thereore its primacy over any ontic science) has no meaning except in a metaphysical regime: what happens to it in a regime characterized by the “end o metaphysics”? I our thought finds itsel henceorth in a non-metaphysical situation, can and must it make a claim or an ontological criterion in order to distinguish philosophy rom a theology o Revelation? But there is also another argument that can be opposed to this distinction characterized by the contrast between the ontological and the ontical: it is not obvious that the theologia sive sacra Scriptura remains a purely and simply ontical science, under the pretext that it concerns only events o historical positivity. First o all because the phenomenology o the event that contemporary thought has only begun to consider seriously—whereas metaphysics had obscured it under the cover o an ontology o the object—leads without a doubt beyond (or at least elsewhere and beside) what is (l’étant ) considered in its concept. Te event is indeed not limited to render an essence first o all conceived and then effectuated in existence, but accomplishes in e-
“o think Being without beings means: to think Being without regard to metaphysics.” in Martin Heidegger, On ime and Being , trans. with an introduction by Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 2002), p. 24. [ranslator’s note: In this and the ollowing ootnote, the author translates rom the original German, which he provides in the ootnote: “Sein ohne das Seiende denken, heißt: Sein ohne Rücksicht au die Metaphysik denken.” As with the previous ootnotes, we have translated rom the author’s own French translation and cite here a published English translation or those who wish to consult the text in ull.] 17 “Being vanishes in Appropriation.” (ibid., p. 22) [“Sein verschwindet im Ereignis.”] 16
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ectivity what no essence has allowed to ore-see ( pré-voir ), such that the event imposes against the conceivable (metaphysical) possibility an inconceivable impossibility, at least beore the arrival o what-is-tocome (l’avènement de l’advenant ). It thus opens the site o new possibilities inasmuch as and even while it remains inconceivable and thus metaphysically impossible. In act, each event redefines what is possible or what is in its being (les possibles de l’étant en son être), and, in this sense, exercises a more inaugural rather than ontical unction, indeed a more inaugural rather than tangentially ontological unction. It ollows that the more a phenomenon is accomplished according to the mode o appearing o the event, the more it corrects and criticizes the metaphysical mode o being (être) in itsel and or the beings (les étants) which it renders possible by its very effective impossibility. Now the biblical Revelation deals precisely with these impossible events which nevertheless attest by their effectivity that “nothing is impossible to God (Gn. 18: 14 = Lk. 1: 37).” In particular, the events o the creation o the world and the resurrection o the flesh contradict at the same time possibility as non-contradictory conceivability or a finite mind (in the metaphysical sense) and the identity o what is (l’étant ) to itsel (according to the principle o non-contradiction), that is to say that these events contest ontology and its definition o what is (l’étant ) as such. Even better, creation and resurrection consist precisely in not respecting the laws o ontologia, because they allow that which is not to be, thus that which is not to be identical to itsel, and that an existence contradict an essence or that an essence contradict itsel—because as a matter o act and as a act—each time God “calls those who are not (les non-étants) as i they were (des étants), καλοῦντος τὰ μὴ ὄντα ὡς ὄντα (Rom. 4: 17).” 18 In this sense, the events par excellence accomplished by creation and resurrection take on an ontological status, or rather a meta-ontological one in that they contradict the laws o ontologia or themselves and or all other beings (étants) as well (creation and resurrection being brought to bear by definition on being [l’étant ] in its totality). Indeed, once the indifference o God to It could even be translated “calls non-beings as beings” (appelle les non-étants en tant qu’étants), echoing “being as being” (l’étant en tant qu’étant ). See our reading concerning the theoretical bearing o this text in God Without Being: Hors-exte, trans. Tomas A. Carlson, with a oreword by David racy (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 1991), pp. 86-9, 93, and 127. 18
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the human (and thereore metaphysical) delimitation o the possible and the impossible is attested, thereore the indifference o God to the rules o ontologia, all that is (the world) finds itsel reinterpreted on the basis o what gives it being or which allows it to be (donne d’être), even against the this-worldly determinations o the being o beings (l’être de l’étant ), since it receives being (reçoit d’être) on the basis o an instance which surpasses all merely ontological determinations o what is (l’étant ). Created or re-created, what is (l’étant ) comes rom, above all, the gif o God and no longer only rom the laws which the thought o ontologia assigns to being (l’être). With this inversion o the relation between ontologia and the possible, the distinction between the theology o Revelation and the philosophy o metaphysics is inverted, and, henceorth the first determines the second. In rendering invalid the ontological criteria o the distinction between what we today call philosophy and theology, we have already put in question another criterion, that o the difference between the possible and the impossible (and thus between what can be experienced and what cannot be experienced). Whether it is a question o the distinction between the potentia ordinata [ordered power] and the potentia extraordinaria [extraordinary power] o God, between the “laws o order” and the “miracles,” or between sensible intuition and intellectual intuition, this division always supposes that one could determine a priori the limits o rationality. And this in turn supposes the finitude o this rationality established as a condition o possibility (and o impossibility). Trough an exactly Copernican reversal, finitude, as a act o reason, ends up determining (or Kant) the infinite (and not the other way around as or Descartes), such that it renders the infinite impossible or us, that is to say in principle absolutely . Tat finitude may define the limits o the possible and the impossible supposes that it would be qualified to fix the conditions o possibility o beings (des étants), in act o beings (des étants) conceived as its objects—otherwise put, that finitude assumes a transcendental a priori unction. I finitude does not have a transcendental status, no longer will it have the right to fix (o course a priori) the limits between the possible and the impossible. Tereore, this limit can differentiate what we today call philosophy and theology only by maintaining philosophy itsel in a transcendental situation, that is to say in assuming a transcendental ego and an equally transcendental idealism. Tis position can be 1 & 2 & 3
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held. Husserl at least held it just as Heidegger himsel prolonged it in a way in Being and ime. But which other philosophy, including and above all among those that today most noisily reuse the theoretical legitimacy o theology, can and would still like to pay the price o a distinction ounded on the transcendental unction o finite subjectivity? Not only does the distinction between the possible and the impossible find itsel de jure reused by the theology o Revelation, according to the principle that “to God nothing is impossible,”19 but it could be that philosophy itsel could in act no longer guarantee the use o this distinction, once no subjectivity can no longer assure the transcendental unction. Te “end o metaphysics” is neither a slogan nor an optional hypothesis, or it in act orbids us to support theses which were assured only by the arguments o metaphysics: without ontologia and the transcendental status o the ego, what we understand today by philosophy can no longer be distinguished rom what philosophy understands to be theology, ollowing the distinction between the ontological and the ontical, as well as the distinction between the possible and the impossible.
Criteria or Distinguishing rom the Point o View o Teology I, thereore, philosophy can no longer today ormulate rom its own point o view its difference with what it calls theology, it remains or us to ask theology itsel i it can, rom its own point o view, ormulate this difference. Indeed it would seem that one could privilege the opposition perectly ormulated by Duns Scotus, in the name o many other theologians (medieval as well as modern ones): “In this question we are aced with the controversy between the philosophers and theologians. Te philosophers insist on the perection o nature and deny supernatural perection. Te theologians, on the other hand, recognize the deficiency o nature and the need o grace and supernatural perection.” 20 See a more detailed argument in Jean-Luc Marion, “Te Impossible or Man— God,” in ranscendence and Beyond: A Postmodern Inquiry , ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), pp. 17-43. 20 John Duns Scotus, “Prologue,” in Ordinatio, paragraph no. 5. [English translation: “Duns Scotus on the Necessity o Revealed Knowledge (Prologue o the Ordinatio 19
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Against the letter o meta-physics (understood as transphysica), but according to its concept, philosophy, constituted as a system o metaphysics, would thereore treat o every being (l’ étant ) inasmuch as it admits o a nature, leaving to theology the consideration, i there would be one, o what does not have a nature or which surpasses it. Tis distinction can seem relatively clear i one confines onesel to the problem which, or the most part, has given rise to it: the opposition between the natural beatitude o man (that o the wise man through contemplation exemplified in Book X o the Nicomachean Ethics) and beatitude by divinization or the vision o God, obviously beyond the natural powers o man. Tis nevertheless soon becomes problematic once we explicitate the principle that underlies it: that nature does nothing in vain, that nothing can desire what it cannot reach through its own strength. Tis thesis (o an Aristotelian origin) is perhaps valid or the things o the world, at least or those or which a quidditative definition remains conceivable or possible ollowing a restrictive καθ᾽ αὑτό; but it becomes problematic or the things (beings [étants], or more radically creatures) whose quidditative definition remains inconceivable because it does not remain radically by itsel nor in itsel. But such is the case par excellence or man who, created in the image o God, bears his image and likeness up to and including the incomprehensibility proper to God. Man, in order to remain himsel, must remain undefinable, because he carries in himsel, or his essence, the image o the undefinable God. 21 Te impossibility and illegitimacy o defining human nature allows, in the case o his desire or beatitude or desire to see God, or a natural desire o a supernatural good; it even demands this as a consequence o the paradox that man’s nature is to surpass his own nature by virtue o the substitution in him o the least essence with the image o God that renders this essence useless and that replaces it. St. Tomas Aquinas has perectly ormulated this paradox: “Nobilioris conditionis est natura quæ potest consequi perectum bonum, licet indigeat exteriori auxilio ad hoc consequendum, quam natura quæ non potest consequi perectum bonum, sed consequitur quodo John Duns Scotus),” trans. Allan Wolter, O.F.M., Franciscan Studies 11, nos. 3-4 (1951), pp. 231-72.] 21 On the incomprehensibility o man, defined by the very absence o definition, see our essay “ Mihi magna quæstio actus sum: Te Privilege o Unknowing,” Te Journal o Religion 85 (January 2005), pp. 1-24.
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dam bonum imperectum, licet ad consecutionem ejus non indigeat exteriori auxilio. – A nature which can attain the perect good, although it needs outside help, is o a higher condition than a nature which can attain without such recourse only a lesser good.” 22 Te distinction between nature and the supernatural has at least one exception: that o the nature (immediately supernatural) o man himsel. Te decision o Cajetan concerning the supernatural (and no longer natural) character o the desire or God (henceorth reduced to a so called “obediential power”) will later on define the terms o the debate de auxiliis, a quarrel with neither issue nor legitimacy because it maintains, without interrogating it, a distinction which is perhaps valid or each thing, but precisely not or the first thing which theology (which at this moment bears its name well) must take into consideration. Moreover, even i this distinction has governed theology or a long time, rom the Reormation and the seventeenth century, Scholasticism or dogmatics was no longer but one o the three theologies in opposition to positive theology and to mystical (or spiritual) theology. And it seems clear today that the renewal o Christian theology (in particular o Catholic theology) owes its essential results to these two latter theologies, the first one (positive theology) remaining creative only through a return—ceaselessly renewed and threatened outside the various neo-Tomisms—to St. Tomas who, in retrospect, appears to be in the direct line o the Fathers, particularly o St. Augustine. Teology cannot remain what it must be, a comprehension o the world as creation and o man as image o God on the basis o the Revelation o God in Jesus Christ, except by developing a discourse where nature is precisely never ound to be separated rom the supernatural, because the gif o grace precedes everything: being (l’être), essences, St. Tomas Aquinas, Summa theologiæ IaIIæ, q.5, a.5, ad 2. [English translation: Summa Teologiæ, vol. 16, Purpose and Happiness (IaIIæ. 1-5), ed. Tomas Gilby, O.P. (Cambridge, UK: Blackriars, 1969)] On this doctrine see the works o Henri de Lubac, S.J., Te Mystery o the Supernatural , trans. Rosemary Sheed, introduction by David L. Schindler (New York: Te Crossroad Publishing Company, 1998) and Au gustinianism and Modern Teology , trans. Lancelot Sheppard, introduction by Louis Dupré (New York: Te Crossroad Publishing Company, 2000). On the intrinsic link o this doctrine with metaphysics beginning rom Suarez and Descartes, see our study “What is the Ego Capable o? Divinization and Domination: Capable /Capax ,” in Cartesian Questions: Method and Metaphysics, oreword by Daniel Garber (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 1999), pp. 67-95. 22
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nature, reedom, etc…, all o which precisely constitute immediately the gifs o grace, beore being defined by themselves as autonomous natures in the pure state o nature [in puris naturalibus]. In the theology o Revelation, nature [natura] is revealed as always already natured [naturata] and never “pure,” and natured by a naturing nature [natura naturans] which is itsel originarily super-natural. 23 Not only can theology not be opposed to philosophy as the knowledge o the supernatural conronting the knowledge o nature and o the natural (because what we today call philosophy and theology can no longer define, neither one nor the other, a precise concept o nature, thus, by opposition, o the supernatural) but this dichotomy would take away rom theology itsel all its seriousness and its specificity. A remark imposes itsel here. As a matter o act, contemporary philosophy is not only characterized by its critique o the different meanings o the supernatural (rejected under the title o the “world behind” [Hinterwelt ] since Nietzsche) but also and coherently by its abandonment o the concept o nature—abandonment or rather powerlessness to define it since, henceorth, the ontico-ontological oundation o metaphysica generalis has also (and first o all) been wrecked to the advantage o the entirely imprecise univocity o objectivity. Strangely, only a handul o theologians maintain, with no urther arguments, the concept o nature, sometimes only to allow or the survival o the supernatural. Tis powerlessness as such is no serious damage because it is precisely not the role o theology to define or re-define an intrinsically philosophical concept. But this excusable powerlessness dissimulates the tasks proper to the theology o Revelation, tasks that philosophy as such can never and will never be able to accomplish.
Te Shared Indeterminacy Let us summarize the provisional negative result that we have arrived at in these analyses. Firstly, the distinction between theology and philosophy has nothing original about it, but arises rom a late historiIt must not be orgotten that Spinoza takes up the ormulations natura naturans/ natura naturata (Ethics, I, proposition 29) o St. Tomas Aquinas (in Summa theologiæ IaIIæ, q.85, a.6, resp., among others), who himsel ollows John Scotus Erigena. [English translation: Summa Teologiæ, vol. 26, Original Sin (IaIIæ. 81-85), ed. . C. O’Brien, O.P. (Cambridge, UK: Blackriars, 1965)] 23
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cal conjuncture, without any necessity in principle as confirmed, on the one hand, by their marginal role (i not their absence) in the first twelve centuries o Christian thought and, on the other hand, by the di�cult complexity o mutually putting them in place rom the thirteenth century onwards. Secondly, philosophy cannot be conceptually distinguished rom what is now named theology except by assuming the undamental decisions o the system o metaphysics (ontologia as metaphysica generalis, theologia as simply one o the metaphysicæ speciales, determination o the possible and the impossible on the basis o the finitude o the ego henceorth understood to be transcendental). Tirdly, the clearest attempt o modern theology to delimit its own territory while admitting the metaphysical turn o philosophy, indeed the distinction between nature and the supernatural (rom Cajetan to transcendental Tomism), dangerously compromises the naturally supernatural character o the nature o man, exactly as metaphysics misunderstood in principle the originally created , that is to say, the originally given character o what it restrictively called ontologia. Fourthly, what is today called philosophy can no longer (and, as a matter o act, no longer claims to) assume the decisions o metaphysics and thus can no longer conceptually justiy its right to exclude rom the field o rationality what it calls theology. Reciprocally, what is today named theology no longer in act invokes the distinction between nature and the supernatural in order to define its specificity with regard to philosophy, but precisely proceeds ollowing other criteria that are in act empirical and historical, and that are minimally connected (i at all) to the contemporary state o philosophy. From all this ollows a provisional result: the debates concerning the relationship o the disciplines o theology and philosophy, and thereore, consequently, the conflict o their respective aculties, and finally on the equilibrium (or the contradiction) between what is commonly called the reedom o inquiry, etc… and what is commonly called the fidelity to the deposit o the aith, to the Magisterium, in other words concerning all these silent tensions that, or more than two centuries, have not ceased to compromise the work o the indivisible Christian thought in all its disciplines—these debates no longer have any conceptual justification. Tey certainly still trouble contemporary research, but on the basis o an opposition which has disappeared, or want o combatants who are really armed, since the period when the “end o metaphysics” began. It is now only a 1 & 2 & 3
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question o the dark light o already extinguished stars. We find a remarkable indicator o this common indecisive indeterminacy in the renunciation by what is today called theology and philosophy o their claims to the status o sciences. Philosophy, immediately conronted with the paradigmatic scientificity o mathematics (Plato) has not ceased, in spite o strong reservations (Aristotle, the new Academy, Tomas Aquinas, etc…), building a system with the sciences within metaphysica, and then equaling them and surpassing their certitude (Descartes), or even defining itsel directly as a Wissenschaf (Hegel), a Wissenschaflehre (Fichte, Bolzano), until a banal Erkenntnistheorie (o the various neo-Kantian philosophies), and finally a “rigorous science” (Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaf , Husserl). Te obsessional prestige o the paradigm o science has gone so ar that Carnap and the Vienna Circle could only conceive o the so called overcoming o metaphysics by a recourse to a “science,” be it only approximative o the analysis o language (“Überwindung der Metaphysik durch logische Analyse der Sprache”). But the conditions to justiy this scientificity always end up, consciously or implicitly, requiring nothing less than a transcendental posture, thus by recognizing an a priori which is itsel essentially finite. No figure o contemporary philosophy today can still assume this transcendental posture, at least in the sense that metaphysics had never hesitated to make a claim or it. Now it happens that what we today call theology did not impose itsel as theologia o Revelation except through a certain resistance and mimetism—at the same time towards philosophia and what was to become its theologia rationalis—in claiming or itsel, too, the title o science (obviously rigorous), thus accomplishing what a great historian has qualified as “the most sensational episode o the entry o Aristotle in Christendom.”24 Tis claim did not take or its paradigm the certitude and the evidence o mathematics but, being regulated by the decisions o Aristotle, took or its paradigm the model o logical ormality and the hierarchization o the sciences. o the recurring question “How can we establish the scientific character o the Christian
On this once so crucial question, we are ollowing Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., La théologie comme science au XIII e siècle, 3rd ed., rev. and enl. (Paris: J. Vrin, 1969), p. 13. It can evidently be understood in two opposing senses. 24
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aith whose materials (Revelation, Scriptures in the tradition, etc…) are not immediately given in the experience o the world but indirectly through aith?,” St. Tomas proposes to answer by the subalternation o the sciences or, more exactly, by a “quasi-subalternation” 25: in the same way that mathematics establishes its truths as principles or physics (geometry or perspective or astronomy, arithmetic or music, etc…), likewise, because the habitus fidei is almost [quasi] like a habitus o principles, theologia draws its principles rom aith (which receives the Revelation, Scriptures in the tradition, etc…) by a quasisubalternation and thereore ormally ulfills the criteria o scientificity.26 Te development o contemporary theology, in the renewal o Tomistic studies and the reappropriation o the Fathers, as well as in the various dialectical, kerygmatic, aesthetic, dramatic theologies (and even the theological theology in the sense o the last part o the triptych o Hans Urs von Balthasar) unolds entirely—at least one can reasonably argue so—on the basis o surpassing the ambition o sub jecting the Christian thought o the Revelation to the paradigm o a science, whatever this paradigm may be, whatever this science may be. And this or an essential reason: contemporary rationality, dominated by the “end o metaphysics,” no longer has a univocal concept o science at its disposal, even and above all in the most undamental scientific disciplines. Te crisis o oundation, which characterizes the progress o physics in quantum physics, has even been made possible by the Ibid ., pp. 82-3. “habitus fidei, qui est quasi habitus principiorum” (Scriptum super libros Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi Episcopi Parisiensis I , Prologus, q.1, a.3, sol.2, ad 3); or “ipsa, quæ fide tenemus, sint nobis quasi principia in hac scientia. – those truths that we hold in the first place by aith are or us, as it were, first principles in this science.” (Expositio super librum Boethii De rinitate I, q.2, a.2, resp.) [English translation: ibid., p. 53] See: “Et hoc modo sacra doctrina est scientia, quia procedit ex principiis notis lumine superioris scientiæ, quæ scilicet est scientia Dei et beatorum. – In this second manner is Christian theology a science, or it flows rom ounts recognized in the light o a higher science, namely God’s very own which he shares with the blessed.” ( Summa theologiæ Ia, q.1, a.2, resp.) [English translation: ibid., vol. 1] — Let us emphasize that, in principle, it is not a matter o a strict subalternation between two sciences, because the science o God and the saints does not itsel constitute a science in the Aristotelian sense; it is only a question o the givenness (or availability) o principles which are themselves non-scientific; it is thereore, at best, a question o a quasi-subalternation. Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P. underlines this very honestly, despite his uncritical enthusiasm. 25 26
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renunciation o any unification o knowledge on the basis o univocal principles which are compatible among themselves. It is appropriate that what we call theology today accepts this state o affairs and, consequently, definitively gives up seeking, in the latest philosophical ashion or the latest ashion in the “social sciences,” an ultimate and illusory paradigm (supposedly scientific) to which it must conorm at any price (even at the price o losing the least access to the Revelation). And yet the attempt o St. Tomas Aquinas to coner a scientific status to theology offers the more attentive reader an indication that could perhaps break through this aporia. Indeed the principles that the habitus fidei can assign to the sacra doctrina as scientific theology comes to it rom the (quasi) scientia superior which comes rom and is dispensed by God and the saints (“quæ scilicet est scientia Dei et beatorum”).27 It is here a question o principles, i you wish, but o principles given in the knowledge o experience, given in a non-immediate empirical way (which is not universally available, which is not an a priori but an enigmatic a posteriori), and yet effectively given. Te event—or it is indeed an event—o the Revelation, in giving this absolutely unoreseeable experience, which in a sense is absolutely impossible according to the criteria o metaphysical scientificity (because it is without horizon, without transcendental ego, without repetition, without predictability, without a quidditative definition, thereore without being an object), paradoxically opens a space o new knowledge, a field o phenomena which would have otherwise remained invisible. And thus it gives the possibility (metaphysically impossible) o a comprehension, that is to say it offers an extension o the field o rationality. As always, the extension o the field o the struggle liberates theory, even theological theory. Te only question or a theology aware o its origin and thus o its originality will then be to understand how the new given o Revelation can unold in a rationality that corresponds to it. And this extension o the given also constitutes—or every philosophy that wants to overcome, one day i it can ever do so, the “end o metaphysics”—the most serious challenge, but also the only one which can save it. And in this way we can have a glimpse o how “only a god could still save us.” St. Tomas Aquinas, Summa theologiæ Ia, q.1, a.2, resp. [English translation: ibid., vol. 1] 27
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o Know in order to Love, to Love in order to Know Te criterion, which remains between what we today call philosophy and theology, does not depend or, more exactly, no longer depends on the delimitations imposed by metaphysics on the field o the conceivable (and thus o what can be experienced); it depends instead on a separation that, at God’s initiative, Revelation introduces there: the distinction concerns the revealed and the non-revealed, the kerygma received and the wisdom (or knowledge) constructed: “Te λόγος o God is alive, effective, and more cutting (τομώτερος) than a two-edged sword; it penetrates until the very division o the soul and the spirit, between the joints and the marrow, discerning the intentions and the thoughts o the heart (κριτικὸς ἐνθυμήσεων καὶ ἐννοιῶν καρδίας) (Heb. 4: 12).” Literally the Word, thus reason, introduces a division, establishing a critical criterion or distinguishing among the thoughts and conceptions o men those which come rom God. Inevitably, one can raise an objection to this criterion literally allen rom heaven: it already supposes the act o Revelation (otherwise said, it implies that the tradition transmitted by the biblical texts is trustworthy). Tus it has meaning only or believers, supposing that the difficulty is resolved even beore examining it—theology is distinguished rom philosophy i one immediately admits the act that a given, specific to the theology o Revelation, can be ound. But it is precisely a question o what this criterion implies: it depends on each thinker to decide on what he admits as being given to him, thus, o deciding or himsel in the ace o the critical word (λόγος κριτικὸς), in deciding whether he adds a given to the field o the conceivable and o what can be experienced or not. Teology begins when thought considers the revealed given as a phenomenal given, in principle equal to all other givens, in deciding to satisy the particular epistemological procedures that it nevertheless claims or its reception. Tese conditions can be ormulated in various ways but they always come back to the same reversal on the basis o the interpretation o Isaiah 7: 9 (according to the Vetus latina) that St. Augustine never stopped meditating on: “Nisi credideritis non intelligetis – Unless you believe, you will not understand.” o understand the revealed given as an equally rationalizable given (thus in order to integrate it to 1 & 2 & 3
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a univocal and universal rationality), it is necessary (contrary to the procedures common to the other fields o knowledge) to begin by believing—accepting, validating, assuming—it as given. In a sense the quasi-subalternation o theologia to the scientia beatorum [science o the blessed] is inscribed, in St. Tomas, in this line o thought. Moreover, this is also the case among certain o his predecessors when they reverse the conjunction between reason and belie: “On the side o Aristotle, the argument is that reason, knowing one doubtul thing, produces belie, but rom the side o Christ, the argument is that it is belie that produces reason.”28 It was Pascal who ully clarified the originary radicality o this reversal in retrieving a ormula o St. Augustine (“Non intratur in veritatem nisi per charitatem. – One does not enter into the truth except through charity.”) 29 and in commenting on this perectly: “Hence when speaking o things human, we say that we should know them beore loving them—a saying which has become proverbial. Yet “Propter hoc bene dictum est a quodam, quoniam apud Aristotelem argumentum est ratio rei dubie aciens fidem; apud Christum autem argumentum est fides aciens rationem.” (Guillaume d’Auxerre, Summa aurea. Prologus, ed. Philippe Pigouchet, ol. 2 ra), cited by Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P. (ibid., p. 35), who identifies Simon de ournai as the originator o this ormula: “Doctrina Aristotelis est de his de quibus ratio acit fidem, sed Christi doctrina de his quorum fides acit rationem.” in Expositio in Symbolum Quicumque, ms. Paris, Nat. lat. 14886, ol. 73a. See also Gilbert de la Porrée, In librum (Boethii) de prædicatione trium personarum, PL 64, pp. 1303-4: “In cæteris acultatibus… non ratio fidem, sed fides prævenit rationem. In his enim non cognoscentes credimus, sed credentes cognoscimus.” 29 St. Augustine, Contra Faustum XXXII.18, PL 42, p. 507. One must not omit (as Heidegger does, Being and ime, §29, pp. 131 and 403-4) the conclusion: “Probamus etiam ipsum [sc. Spiritum sanctum] inducere in omnem veritatem: quia non intratur in veritatem nisi per charitatem; charitas autem Dei, diffusa est , ait Apostolus, in cordibus nostris per Spiritum sanctum qui datus est nobis (Rom. v, 5). – We also prove that he [the Holy Spirit] leads us into all truth because one does not enter into truth except through love. But the love o God has been poured out in our hearts, the apostle says, by the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us (Rom. 5: 5).” [English translation: Answer to Faustus, a Manichean (Contra Faustum Manichæum), trans. with an introduction and notes by Roland eske, S.J. (New York: New City Press, 2007), p. 420.] Te epistemological reversal consists well in recognizing the revealed given as a given on the basis o what the Holy Spirit gives to be loved (ce que le Saint Esprit donne d’aimer ); one can thereore not make it a part o an analytic o Dasein supposedly “methodologically atheistic”—otherwise, it would be necessary to acknowledge that this analytic destroys ontologia only with the tools o Revelation itsel, without the most powerul conceivable deconstruction o the system o metaphysics (as proven negatively by the recent attempts o Jean-Luc Nancy and, to a lesser degree, Jacques Derrida). 28
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the saints, on the contrary, when speaking o things divine, say that we should love them in order to know them, and that we enter into truth only through love. O this they have made one o their most useul maxims.”30 Pascal even makes o this a universal epistemological rule: “ruth is so obscured nowadays and lies so well established that unless we love the truth we shall never recognize it.” 31 And thus, to claim to know God such as he reveals himsel without loving him amounts to not knowing his truth and not even seeing it: “What a long way it is between knowing God and loving him!” 32 Reciprocally, i love dominates among the three theological virtues (1 Cor. 13: 13), and i truth is not discovered here at the last instance except through love, then we can obviously sustain the paradox that “the greatest o the Christian virtues… is the love o truth.” 33 Tese ormulations, which are systematically related, correspond directly to those o St. Augustine: “Volo eam [sc. veritatem] acere in corde meo coram te in conessione. – I want to do the truth in my heart beore your ace in a conession (Conessiones X.1.1.14.140).” Tis same epistemological role o love towards truth can also be described negatively, ollowing the thread o hatred which resists the repercussion, all the more accusatory, o truth: “… or it [sel-love] conceives a deadly hatred or the truth which rebukes it and convinces it o its aults. It would like to do away with this truth, and not being able to destroy it as such, it destroys it , as best it can, in the consciousness o itsel and others; that is, it takes every care to hide its aults both rom itsel and others, and cannot bear to have them pointed 33 bis
See Blaise Pascal, “Te Art o Persuasion,” in Great Shorter Works o Pascal , trans. with an introduction by Emile Cailliet and John C. Blankenagel (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1974), p. 203. We have commented on this thesis in On Descartes’s Meta physical Prism: Te Constitution and Limits o Onto-theo-logy in Cartesian Tought , trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Chicago: Te University o Chicago Press, 1999), §25, pp. 333-45. – Heidegger, who cites this sentence “ibidem,” reers this erroneously to the Pensées, a conusion owing to the imprecise usage o the Léon Brunschvicg edition o Pensées et Opuscules (Paris: Hachette, 1912), p. 169 (see ootnote 4 o Being and ime, §1, pp. 2 and 399). 31 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, trans. with an introduction by Alban J. Krailsheimer, rev. ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1995), §739, p. 229. 32 Ibid., §377, p. 110. 33 Idem, “Fragment d’une XIXe Provinciale,” in Œuvres complètes, ed. Louis Lauma (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1963), p. 469. 33 bis St. Augustine, Conessions, trans. with an introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick (Oxord: Oxord University Press, 1991), p. 179. [translation modified] 30
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out or noticed.… For is it not true that we hate the truth and those who tell it to us, and we like them to be deceived to our advantage…? … []elling the truth is useul to the hearer but harmul to those who tell it, because they incur such odium.”34 Evidently, this is a literal commentary o Conessions X.23.34 which successively treats o the veritas redarguens [the truth which challenges], the nolunt convinci quod alsi sint [they do not wish to be persuaded that they are mistaken], the oderunt eam [they hate the truth], and the initial citation o veritas parit odium [truth engenders hatred]. Otherwise put, or Pascal as or Augustine, “truth apart rom charity is not God, but his image and an idol that we must not love or worship. Still less must we worship its opposite, which is alsehood.”35 Te field o what can henceorth be legitimately named theology is thereore defined thus: Revelation offers a given comparable to every other given o every other science. But the procedures o access to this given call or a different epistemology: here the given has nothing immediate about it because it is necessary to believe it in order to receive it and to eventually reach a partial and always provisional comprehension o it. In act, to believe here means much more than 34 bis
Blaise Pascal, “Sel-love,” in Pensées, §978, pp. 324-6. [ranslator’s note: emphases by the author] See together with: “Tere is a lot o difference between not being or Christ and saying so, and not being or Christ and pretending to be. Te ormer can perorm miracles, but not the latter, or it is clear in the case o the ormer that they are against the truth but not in that o the others, and so the miracles are clearer.” (ibid., §843, p. 265) 34 bis St. Augustine, Conessions, pp. 199-200. 35 Blaise Pascal, Pensées, §926, p. 295. – At the same time, the text containing “Contradictions have always been lef to blind the wicked, or anything offensive to truth and charity is wrong. Tat is the true principle.” (ibid., §962, p. 316) is almost a literal commentary o a series o Augustinian sentences: “Initium operum bonorum, conessio est operum malorum. Facis veritatem, et venis ad lucem. Quid est, Facis veritatem?… Venis autem ad lucem ut maniestentur opera tua, quia in Deo sunt acta; quia et hoc ipsum quod tibi displicuit peccatum tuum, non tibi displiceret, nisi Deus tibi luceret, et ejus veritas tibi ostenderet.” (In Joannis evangelium XII.13, PL 35, p. 1491) – Te beginning o good works is the conession o evil works. You do the truth and you come to the light. What does it mean, you do truth?… But you come to the light that your works may be made maniest, because they have been done in God, because also this very thing which displeases you, your sin, would not displease you unless God were shedding his light upon you and his truth showing it to you.” [English translation: ractates on the Gospel o John 11-27 , trans. John W. Rettig (Washington, DC: Te Catholic University o America Press, 1988, pp. 41-2] 34
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to hold as true (assumption, opinion, conviction, doxa, the first kind o knowledge, etc…); to believe demands loving because the revealed given is not only worthy that we love it because it results rom a gracious gif (a grace), but above all because it concerns in the last instance and rom the very beginning the revelation o love itsel. Love plays a role o epistemological mediation; it is a required condition o access to the revealed given. And it plays this role because, more radically, it exhausts and identifies that itsel which Revelation gives: love in action (en acte, in actu). Such a theology, in the proper sense, is directly opposed to the thesis, or example, o Fichte: “For me the relation o the divinity to ourselves as ethical beings is what is immediately given.” 36 Indeed, with perect coherence, Fichte guarantees this immediacy o the given in postulating a strict transcendental attitude: “o summarize: my philosophy o religion cannot be judged, discussed, or consolidated except rom a transcendental point o view.”37 And he concludes very logically that as long as “theology” is not summarized in a “doctrine o religion, the doctrine o the relations o God to finite beings (êtres finis), but, as must be the case, claims to remain a doctrine o the essence o God in and or himsel ,” then, “clearly and directly: this theology must be abolished as an illusion surpassing all finite aculty o comprehension.” 38 Teology, in the sense which we have tried to make more precise, results rom a given, but rom a given the experience o which contradicts the system o metaphysics in that it transgresses the limits between the possible and the impossible, the ontological and the ontical, the natural and the supernatural, limits which result rom the transcendental attitude and which accomplish it. Tis contradiction becomes the undamental condition o all serious thought about the Revelation and the conditions o mediate access to its given. o ace this contradiction constitutes the duty and even the identity o
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, “Appel au public contre l’accusation d’athéisme II,” in Querelle de l’athéisme: Suivie de divers textes sur la religion, trans. Jean-Christophe Goddard (Paris: J. Vrin, 1993), p. 55; Fichtes Werke, vol. 5, Zur Religionsphilosophie, ed. Immanuel Hermann Fichte (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971), p. 214. For example, because the same antagonisms can easily be ound in Kant and Hegel, not to mention their successors. 37 Idem, “Rappels, Réponses, Questions,” §19, in Querelle de l’athéisme, p. 149; Werke, p. 351. 38 Idem, “Lettre privée,” in Querelle de l’athéisme, p. 181; Werke, pp. 386 . 36
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theology as a knowledge o God in the twoold meaning o a knowledge about God and a knowledge starting rom (à partir de) God.
Recapitulation and suggestions From these quick remarks, we can at least draw the sketch o some conclusions which are also valid as the anticipated description o a new relation yet to come between a theology on the basis o Revelation and a philosophy at the “end o metaphysics.” Firstly, between these two knowledges, the unbridgeable gap between the modes o givenness (revealed rom elsewhere or one, experienced by onesel or the other) and the gap between their modes o experience (immediate or mediated by aith and the love o truth) never put in question the ormal identity o their relation to a given: like all knowledge, one and the other are concerned with the comprehension o a given. Moreover, the gap between the procedures o access to their respective givens and between the corresponding protocols o their experience cannot be measured except against the background o this ormal univocity o the givens which come into play. I it is absolutely necessary to take notice o a difference, we can say that theology admits o a given which is broader (precisely because revealed, mediated, and coming rom a radical elsewhere) than that o philosophy and, obviously, than those o the regional positive sciences. But this gap yet again maniests even better the act that they exercise the same rationality as the comprehension o a given. It is enough to recognize that, i we consider it strictly rom the philosophical point o view, without satisying its epistemological requirement (believing in order to understand, loving in order to know), and thus without the mediation that opens up its given, the theology o Revelation remains and must remain a discourse o the as i : in the best o cases, a philosopher will admit that everything takes place as i the theological discourse rationally understood a given, but a mediate given, thus, obviously, without access to its own presupposition o the immediacy o the given in general: the unavailability o the revealed (mediate) given does not prevent the recognition o the rationality o its comprehension. Te theologian can never ask or more, but the philosopher should never settle or less. On this condition, there will never be a competition between these two knowledges (their givens differ as radically as the manner o acceding 1 & 2 & 3
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to them) nor an epistemological contradiction (or the rationality o the procedures remains univocal). 39 In this context, it then becomes absurd to imagine that, between philosophy at the “end o metaphysics” and the theology o Revelation, the contrast can be confined to having more or less reedom o inquiry or reedom o thought. Secondly, this gap and this supplementary mediation nevertheless place theology in a dominant position in relation to the other knowledges, and particularly philosophy. Indeed, theology, as theology o Revelation, has always had to resist the metaphysical constitution o philosophy; that it ofen easily or uneasily arrived at this in the course o history only confirms that it always tried to remain itsel without devaluing itsel in a compromised or countereit philosophy. By vocation, the theology o Revelation must settle outside metaphysics. It thereore precedes philosophy, which today struggles to admit the “end o metaphysics,” and, sometimes, to even see the question. But theology precedes philosophy on its own path, on the road o its own expansion as non-metaphysical philosophy. It does not impose any constraint on philosophy, but offers it the possibility o being delivered rom the mortgage that still weighs heavily upon it because o the onto-theological constitution o metaphysics. In this way, theology becomes the rational bad conscience o philosophy because it can (and must) immediately consider a given (which is nevertheless mediate)—it is true that it is a given which is highly exceptional—among all the other new givens that philosophy at the “end o metaphysics” must consider and struggles so much to integrate. For the question o the ullness to be recognized in the given—otherwise said, the question o the extension o the fields o givenness and the modes o givenness—is also posed to philosophy: that it does not have to integrate the mediate given o Revelation does not exempt it rom considering the admission o givens that surpass the limits fixed by the system o metaphysics and by the transcendental attitude that accomplished it. Tus must it integrate non-objectifiable phenomena and non-beings (non-étants): It is necessary to emphasize that philosophy never does and can never do theology (above all when it does philosophy o religion): what philosophers denounce as a theological turn remains an unounded ear because it is a matter o a pious wish, o an illusory claim. Philosophy does not have the means or such a turn and much more is required o it, since it does not have access to the given (mediated by aith) o Revelation. 39
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the phenomena o the flesh, o the other human being (l’autrui), o the idol, o the event, but also o the call, o boredom, o the lover, o the unsayable language (langage dénégati ),40 etc…, in short, all that we have called saturated phenomena. Until where can and must this expansion extend? As ar as it is concerned with this question, the theology o Revelation cannot, by origin and definition, but already respond to it: it must expand the given until the given o Revelation mediated by aith. But philosophy, situated at the “end o metaphysics,” has hardly begun to heed this demand today. Philosophy must admit—what it already practices in reality without always being able to admit it clearly—that its abandonment in act o the transcendental attitude opens to it the a priori limitless field o a radical empiricism, which is reed rom the required interrogation concerning what one is allowed to experience and what one has no right to experience. As an adept o a radical (because transcendent) empiricism, theology also has the unction o being the empirical bad conscience or philosophy. And in this sense, it happens that, by excess and inadvertently, it precedes philosophy in the openness to and the construction o philosophical questions. Tere is thereore a rationality o theology and it is the same as, although more complex and more powerul than, that o philosophy, and, to an even lesser degree, the same as that o the positive sciences: the comprehension o a given.41 Te act o ignoring this extension o We are thinking here o the retrieval o what is mistakenly called “negative theology” by contemporary philosophy within the phenomenological movement [or Derrida and his discussion o our retrieval o the Dionysian doctrine to deconstruct deconstruction, see “In the Name: How to avoid speaking o ‘Negative Teology’,” reprinted in In Excess: Studies o Saturated Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002), pp. 128-62 and “On the Gif: A Discussion between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc Marion, moderated by Richard Kearney,” in God, the Gif and Postmodernism, ed. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 54-78] as well as the analytic tradition, where the later Wittgenstein appears as the patient and resolute transgression o the prohibition which concludes the ractatus Logico-Philosophicus: whereo one cannot speak, thereo one must precisely not be silent, or to be silent already implies saying it (déjà de [se] le dire) in one way or another, indeed o saying it in a third voice. 41 We are all amiliar with the amous definition ormulated by Étienne Gilson: “Christian philosophy is a philosophy which, though ormally distinguishing the two orders, considers Christian Revelation to be an indispensable guide to truth.” 40
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