Divine Transcendence, Religious Pluralism and Barth's Doctrine of God

Abstract:  Pluralists such as John Hick frequently argue that the transcendence, mystery and ineffability of 'God' provide the grounds on which a pluralistic interpretation of religion should be embraced. In this article the author explores the possibility that certain contemporary accounts of divine transcendence, consciously indebted to Karl Barth, may implicitly open the door to Hick's line of argument. After identifying four reasons why Barth's own account of transcendence ( Church Dogmatics II/1) resists a pluralist appropriation, the author examines two contemporary proposals: William Placher's The Domestication of Transcendence and Stacy Johnson's The Mystery of God . He contends that, unlike Barth, the accounts of God's transcendence proposed by these two theologians implicitly open the door to Hick's line of argument.     

Sacredness and Aesthetics: Kearney and Desmond on Prayer

Heidegger famously asserted that one cannot pray to the God of onto‐theo‐logic. God is here made into a determinate concept, the highest idea of reason, and thereby loses its constitutive transcendence and personhood. To think of God appropriately after Heidegger means to think of God in a way amenable to prayer. It is widely recognized that deconstruction does not fare well on this score as it turns prayer into some form of meditation/contemplation. In response, one ought to look for something between onto‐theo‐logic and deconstruction. In this article, I explore and assess two attempts to do so, by Richard Kearney and William Desmond respectively. I argue that Kearney does not manage to escape the trap of deconstruction because he does not allow for an intimation of God in prayer. This is achieved in a more metaphysical register by Desmond.     

Puzzles of Discourse in Being and Time: Minding Gaps in Understanding

Abstract

This paper takes issue with Heidegger’s claim that discourse and understanding are equally basic in the constitution of our making sense of the world. I argue that Heidegger cannot consistently establish this claim, and that discourse can be thought of as being more basic than understanding. The proposed line of thinking has the advantage of shedding light on both the finitude and the normativity of our making sense of the world. Thus, by setting up an exchange with the later Wittgenstein’s discussion of rule‐following makes it possible to develop an approach to the normativity of meaning which was not readily available on Heidegger’s account. Further, the paper offers an inquiry into a certain aspect of our finite sense of the world which, in spite of Heidegger’s marked attention to finitude, was obscured by his approach to discourse. The implications of the argument might be far‐reaching. The view of a basic role of discourse can put into question Heidegger’s guiding vision according to which time alone is ultimately the fundamental constituent of our sense of what there is. The engagement with Wittgenstein indicates, in conjunction with other themes of the paper, that there are certain perspectives and issues in phenomenology which are much closer to aspects of the analytic tradition than is usually granted.     

Negative theology and science in the thought of Semyon Frank

Semën Frank (1877–1950) considered the Universe as the “all-unity.” According to him, everything is a part of the all-unity, which has a divine character. God is present in the world, but his nature is incomprehensible. In this article I analyze two consequences of Frank’s panentheistic view of the relation between science and theology. Firstly, the limits of scientific knowledge allow recognition of the mystery of the world and the transcendence of God. Secondly, Frank claimed that nature is a “trace” of God and the manifestation of the absolute reality, i.e. the all-unity. As a result, both science and theology lead to the knowledge of God, although we cannot understand His essence.     

D. Z. Phillips on the grammar of “God”

In this essay dedicated to the memory of D. Z. Phillips, I propose to do two things. In the first part I present his position on the grammar of God and the language game in some detail, discussing the confusion of “subliming” the logic of our language, the contextual genesis of sense and meaning, the idea of a world view, language game, logic, and grammar internal to each context, the constitution of the religious context, and the grammar of God proper to that context. In the second part I present my appreciative critical reflection by arguing that the conception of context and language game must be made more dialectical, that the grammar of God needs more systematic metaphysical analysis, and that a greater sense of the radical transcendence of God over a language game is necessary in order to avoid reductionism always inherent in any contextual approach.     

THE MYSTERY OF GOD AND THE SUFFERING OF HUMAN BEINGS1

The proper theological response to the problem of reconciling human suffering with the Christian belief in a God of infinite wisdom, power, and goodness is not to try to solve the unsolvable, but to preserve the mystery of God. The concept ‘mystery’ as attributed to God signifies intelligibility — inexhaustible intelligibility — not contradiction. Mystery suggests the range and limits of a human being's knowledge of God. We cannot know why God permits suffering in this particular instance or the character of God's response to someone in the throes of suffering. We can know in a general way the necessary conditions of the possibility for the realization of God's purpose because we know the purpose of God's activity through revelation. This paper argues that if God created the universe so that creatures could share in the fullness of God's life, God could not have achieved God's purpose without any human suffering. This argument upholds the inexhaustible intelligibility of God's activity and thus preserves the mystery of God, for if God could have achieved God's purpose without any suffering, yet willed the suffering of creatures, then the eternal plan of providence and the actual unfolding of salvation history would be arbitrary and irrational.     

Heidegger and hallucination

Can Heidegger account for hallucination? I argue that while Heidegger does not develop an account of hallucination, he gives us all the resources we need to develop such an account. I first discuss a prominent argument against the very possibility of such an account. I argue that this argument is mistaken. I then discuss Heidegger's brief remarks on hallucination. In analysing a particular case study, Heidegger claims that the subject hallucinates for two reasons. First, he fails to realize the distinction between the different ways entities are present to him. For this reason, he cannot encounter a particular entity as it is present. Second, he is unable to do anything about the fact and manner of the presence of that entity. He is ‘unable to move in his world freely’, as Heidegger puts it. I show how these remarks, when taken in combination with Heidegger's broader ontology, allow us to explain the possibility of hallucination in a distinctively Heideggerian way.     

God is not a person (an argument via pantheism)

This paper transforms a development of an argument against pantheism into an objection to the usual account of God within contemporary analytic philosophy (’Swinburnian theism’). A standard criticism of pantheism has it that pantheists cannot offer a satisfactory account of God as personal. My paper will develop this criticism along two lines: first, that personhood requires contentful mental states, which in turn necessitate the membership of a linguistic community, and second that personhood requires limitation within a wider context constitutive of the ’setting’ of the agent’s life. Pantheism can, I argue, satisfy neither criterion of personhood. At this point the tables are turned on the Swinburnian theist. If the pantheist cannot defend herself against the personhood-based attacks, neither can the Swinburnian, and for instructively parallel reasons: for neither doctrine is God in the material world; in the pantheist case God is identical with the world, in the Swinburnian case God transcends it. Either way both the pantheist and the Swinburnian are left with a dilemma: abandon divine personhood or modify the doctrine of God so as to block the move to personhood.

     

Hartshorne’s Dipolar Theism and the Mystery of God

Anselm said that God is that than which nothing greater can be conceived, but he believed that it followed that God is greater than can be conceived. The second formula—essential to sound theology—points to the mystery of God. The usual way of preserving divine mystery is the via negativa, as one finds in Aquinas. I formalize Hartshorne’s central argument against negative theology in the simplest modal system T. I end with a defense of Hartshorne’s way of preserving the mystery of God, which he locates in the actuality of God rather than in the divine existence or essence. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God.     

"EVERYMAN'S ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT": A DISSIDENT VERSION

We must agree, I think, with Frank Ebersole that there is something preposterous in supposing that the God of religious belief, the God who handed down tablets to Moses on Mt. Sinai, etc., should be proven to exist by the ontological argument. Indeed, when we place the one, the ontological argument, by the side of the other, the God of religious belief, there seems hardly to be any connection between them. But if we agree to this perception of things, what sense can we make of the ontological argument, for example, the “pull” that it sometimes exerts on us?     

Liturgy and drama: a context of catharsis and transcendence?

This article is concerned with the role of liturgy and drama in the life of the Church and especially with regard to church growth. The assumption that traditional liturgy has only a tangential role in mission is questioned by comparing liturgy and drama and their role in evangelism. Christian worship from the fourth century began to be dramatised; this was a process reinforced by allegorical interpretations of the liturgy. That development and the para-liturgical dramas created from the tenth century onwards were in response to evangelistic needs. Mystery plays, the Holy Week liturgy and popular devotion in medieval Christianity in the West tended to focus on the passion of Christ. They were like tragedy in creating an encounter with death which could lead to catharsis and self-transcendence. Parts of the Holy Week liturgy are looked at in that light. The final section of the article deals with the way the liturgy offers an opportunity for corporate and personal renewal both in terms of inward preparation and outward proclamation of the Easter mystery. In these ways liturgy offers a context for an experience of God and can be seen as having an important role to play in church growth.     

The Responsiveness of Pure Actuality: Unmediated Agency,Linguistic Potentiality and the Divine Accommodation of Speech Acts

This article builds upon the trinitarian theology of Thomas Weinandy, applying his elaboration of Aquinas' notion of God's pure actuality to the matter of linguistic agency. In particular, the seemingly contradictory claim will be made that God is more responsive to us (properly understood) precisely because he cannot perform the act of response. Rather, God reveals the pure act that is himself through what the article terms notional responses. These are the epistemological accommodations of his pure actuality to finite human persons in the form of speech acts as humans change in their relation to God. In understanding God's communicative agency as such, divine transcendence will be shown to establish divine immanence rather than to stand at odds with it.     

God as immanent transcendence in Mark C. Taylor and John D. Caputo

This article aims at describing and evaluating Mark C. Taylor's and John D. Caputo's ideas about God as immanent transcendence. In the first part, the article provides a basic typology of immanent transcendence; the second and third parts present Taylor's and Caputo's philosophies of religion. It is shown that the two authors emphasize two different aspects of immanent transcendence which strongly affect their understandings of God. In Taylor, God is described in terms of imagination, while Caputo refers to God as an event. In the final section, the article then, for heuristic purposes, introduces a distinction between “pagan,” “Judaic,” and “Christian” interpretations of God as immanent transcendence, and argues that Taylor's God of imagination is more “pagan” than “Christian” and that Caputo's God of the event exemplifies a “messianic Judaism.” Here the article offers a few critical remarks as it attempts to develop an outline of a more “Christian” understanding of immanent transcendence.     

Sin and the Limits of Theology: A Reflection in Conversation with Julian of Norwich and Martin Luther

While the confession of divine transcendence entails that all theological speech faces intrinsic limits, the problem of sin brings theology’s limits into focus in a very particular way. For while Christians confess that God has been uniquely and unsurpassably revealed in Jesus Christ, insofar as they do not claim that even this revelation explains the place of sin in the divine economy, the ongoing mystery of sin and evil presents the theologian with a stark alternative. On the one hand, if the grace of God revealed in Christ is emphasized, less attention will be given to the mystery of sin that remains hidden in God; on the other, if theologians emphasize what is hidden, the light of Christ will be obscured. This article explores the tension between these two alternatives with reference to the Showings of Julian of Norwich and Martin Luther’s Bondage of the Will.     

RELIGIOUS LANGUAGE AS POETRY: HEIDEGGER's CHALLENGE

This paper examines how Heidegger's view that language is poetry might provide a helpful way of understanding the nature of religious language. Poetry, according to Heidegger, is language in its purest form, in that it both reveals Being, whilst also showing the difference between word and thing. In poetry, Heidegger suggests, we come closest to the essence of language itself and encounter its strangeness and impermeability, and its revelatory character. What would be the implications for viewing religious language in this way? Through examining Heidegger's view that poetry is the purest form of language, I suggest that it would also be possible to view religious language as poetry in this way, in that it also shows the transcendence of what cannot be brought to presence in language, except as concealed. Such a view of religious language does not regard it as a problematic type of language, deserving special treatment, but rather suggests that in religious language the inarticulable relationship between word and world is revealed.     

Heidegger on Aristotle's “Metaphysical” God

In courses in the twenties and early thirties, Heidegger argues that in Aristotle the question of the being of beings (ontology) and that of the unity of beings (theology) are distinct. Although he treated the two questions as part of one science, prôtē philosophía, Aristotle did not, in Heidegger's view, discuss the way in which these questions belong together. Being is determined theoretically as presence; and God, the first mover, is an aítion, an explanatory ground of motion in sensible ousía. God is required as a ground for the presence of beings as a whole. Heidegger no longer seeks explanatory grounds, nor does he prioritize theory. Rather, he inquires into the essence of ground, and the poietical involvement of Dasein in understanding being. The unity of Aristotle's questions is found in a groundless ground: Dasein as transcendence. The metaphysical god is thus no longer required in Heidegger's phenomenology.     

Evolution and Providence: Discovering Creation as Carmen Dei

Abstract

Bonaventure describes the natural world as carmen Dei (song of God) that humanity should be able to detect through philosophical wisdom. Many contemporary evolutionary biologists, however, present the natural world as an argument against God's existence. Evolution is deemed incompatible with Providence and natural causes competitively exclusive of divine ones. These arguments against God are not proper to science, but to scientism. This purported conflict between evolution and faith is overcome by respecting the epistemological boundaries among science, philosophy, and theology, understanding creation as ontological dependence, and having a non-contrastive divine transcendence, in which God's transcendence does not oppose God's immanence.     

The Holy Trinity: Between Mystery and Analysis

Two significant strands of trinitarian theology, the analytic and the apophatic, emphasize considerations of logical consistency and divine incomprehensibility respectively. This article seeks to mediate between these two seemingly opposed lines of thought by arguing for a fuller awareness of the particular mystery associated with the trinitarian notion of ‘person’. By specifying more closely this mystery of divine personhood, I qualify an overzealous apophaticism and also open up some scope for analytic approaches. I then highlight an implication of the mystery of divine personhood that any proposition linking together person‐language and nature‐language (e.g. ‘the Son is God’) necessarily contains its own mystery and cannot be understood in analytic terms.     

Creativity and self-trust: a field study

Motivation and human achievement remain something of a mystery to the psychologist because the participating factors are varied and complex. This research project attempts to separate out an entity defined as self-trust from more social components of self-function (self-esteem and social appropriateness). The strong indication is that self-trust seems to be the product of a relationship with the secondary caretaker (father) while the broader, more generalized sense of trust and interactive reliability appear to be tied to a close association with mother. The question of who the individual seeks to please is a consideration in this research since closeness may not be restricted to affective alliance. Self-trust, as a concept, can be differentiated from self-esteem or interpersonal trust which offers some appreciation for the creative drive within individuals who pursue original solutions in their push to please.     

What Does Heidegger Mean by the Transcendence of Dasein?

Abstract

In this paper, I shall examine the evolution of Heidegger’s concept of ‘transcendence’ as it appears in Being and Time (1927), ‘On the Essence of Ground’ (1928) and related texts from the late 1920s in relation to his rethinking of subjectivity and intentionality. Heidegger defines Being as ‘transcendence’ in Being and Time and reinterprets intentionality in terms of the transcendence of Dasein. In the critical epistemological tradition of philosophy stemming from Kant, as in Husserl, transcendence and immanence are key notions (see Husserl, The Idea of Phenomenology, 1907, and Ideas I, 1913). Indeed, ‘transcendence in immanence’ is a leitmotif of Husserl’s phenomenology. Husserl discusses transcendence in some detail in Cartesian Meditations §11 in a manner that is not dissimilar to Heidegger. Heidegger is critical of Husserl’s understanding of consciousness and intentionality and Heidegger deliberately chooses to discuss transcendence as an exceptional domain for the discussion of beings in his ‘On the Essence of Ground’, his submission to Husserl’s seventieth-birthday Festschrift. Despite his championing of a new concept of transcendence in the late 1920s, Heidegger effectively abandons the term during the early 1930s. In this paper, I shall explore Heidegger’s articulation of his new ontological conception of finite transcendence and compare it with Husserl’s conception of the transcendence of the ego in order to get clearer what is at stake in Heidegger’s conceptions of subjectivity, Dasein and transcendence.