Abstract
Dillard pursues three objectives in this chapter. First, he distinguishes cases in which metaphysics strengthens theology by disarming skeptical critiques or by introducing illuminating views of reality from cases in which metaphysics cripples theology by spawning insoluble conundrums. Examples of each type of case are presented. Second, Dillard argues that the emphasis upon simple things and tasks both in Heidegger’s later philosophy and in key biblical episodes enables us to discern a deconstructive scriptural hermeneutic capable of resolving metaphysical antinomies that interfere with intimacy between humanity and divinity; specific instances from the Old and New Testaments are adduced. Third, Dillard shows how this deconstructive scriptural hermeneutic is compatible with either Gelassenheit or Streit theology, thus illustrating how both theologies can be biblically based. Therefore, additional considerations are required in order to decide in favor of one of these theologies.
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- 1.
Joseph O’Leary, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of the Metaphysical Tradition (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985), 1.
- 2.
O’Leary’s principle argument is that inserting metaphysical terms into the language of prayer results in speech that is utterly incongruous and bereft of phenomenological content; for example, “O God, your consciousness is all-embracing, your freedom is absolute and they are lived filially by your eternal Son” (ibid., 79). It is difficult to see how this argument has any probative force. Substituting “H2O” into a prayer for water would be awkward at best and at worst utterly incongruous, yet it hardly follows that water is not identical with H2O. Similarly, a metaphysician like St. Thomas Aquinas might reply that from the incongruity and vapidity of substituting “Pure being” for “God” in the language of prayer, it hardly follows that God is not identical with pure being. It should also be noted that some people find it perfectly natural to pray to God using metaphysical terms. In A Treatise on God as First Principle (Whitefish: Kessinger Publishing, 2004), Duns Scotus writes, “May the First Principle of things grant me to believe, to understand, and to reveal what may please his majesty and may raise our minds to contemplate him” (1). A better approach is to present concrete examples of how metaphysics plunges theology into antinomy, deconstruct the offending metaphysics, and then endow the resulting non-metaphysical theology with rich phenomenological content.
- 3.
Lawrence Shapiro, “A Drop in the Sea,” Aeon Magazine, http://aeon.co/magazine/altered-states/dont-believe-in-miracles/
- 4.
Thomas Massaro, S.J., Living Justice: Catholic Social Teaching in Action (Lanham: Rowan & Littlefield, Inc., 2012), 165–172.
- 5.
Ibid., 172.
- 6.
For a discussion of Hugh’s “theological anthropocentrism” and other aspects of Hugh’s philosophical theology, see Peter S. Dillard, Foundation and Restoration in Hugh of St. Victor’s De Sacramentis (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
- 7.
All biblical quotations in English are from The New American Bible (Korea: World Bible Publishers, 2000).
- 8.
All biblical quotations in German are from Die Bibel: Einheitsübersetzung (Stuttgart: Verlag Katholisches Bibelwerk, 2002).
- 9.
See ibid., Ex. 33:7.
- 10.
Martin Heidegger, “The Thing (Epilogue),” in Poetry, Language, Thought, trans. Albert Hofstadter (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), 184.
- 11.
Martin Heidegger, “Why Do I Stay in the Provinces?” quoted in Adam Sharr, Heidegger’s Hut (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2006), 64.
- 12.
There is a point of contact with Heidegger’s earlier discussion of fear (Furcht), which is always fear of some other being in the world, and anxiety (Angst), which is always Da-sein’s anxiety in the face of its own being-in-the-world as such; see Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996), 172–178. Anxiety as a mood distinct from fear discloses one’s own Da-sein as ontologically distinct from other beings in the world.
- 13.
See Gregory of Nyssa, Life of Moses, trans. Abraham J. Mahlherbe and Everett Ferguson (New York: Paulist Press, 1978): “So Moses, who eagerly seeks to behold God, is now taught how he can behold Him: to follow God wherever he might lead is to behold God. His passing by signifies his guiding the one who follows, for someone who does not know the way cannot complete his journey safely in any other way than by following behind his guide. He who leads then, by his guidance, shows the way to the one following. He who follows will not turn aside from the right way if he always keeps the back of his leader in view (119, sec. 252).
- 14.
It is then no accident that God enjoins this itinerant pursuit of the holy just before He specifies the dimensions of the dwelling for the Ark of the Covenant, which is a microcosm of the future temple, in the rest of Exodus. Religious shrines and other objects are not, as the iconoclasts would have it, inherently idolatrous, but only such when they are treated as final destinations rather than temporary stations on the journey of following after the holy.
- 15.
In Chasing Mystery: A Catholic Biblical Theology (Collegeville: Liturgical Press: 2012), Carey Walsh makes a similar point in connection with the gospel account of the transfiguration: “The transfiguration is a conclusive, affirming, and temporary display of divine presence made clear and binding. Peter would like to make the holy presence last by pitching tents. But the kind of encounter holy presence requires is an aptitude for presence and absence, a spiritual abiding, shorn of any need to make a camp” (134).
- 16.
Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy (Of the Event), trans. Richard Rojcewicz and Daniela Vallega-Neu (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2012), 329.
- 17.
See also Mk 14: 7–8 and John 12: 7–8.
- 18.
Heidegger, “The Thing,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 172.
- 19.
“The gift of outpouring is a gift because it stays earth and sky, divinities and mortals” (ibid., 173).
- 20.
See Joseph S. O’Leary, Questioning Back: The Overcoming of Metaphysics in Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Winston Press, 1985) 73–87 for a critique of the Council of Chalcedon’s application of Greek metaphysics to Christology.
- 21.
Heidegger, “The Thing,” in Poetry, Language, Thought, 173.
- 22.
“When we pour wine into the jug, the air that already fills the jug is simply displaced by a liquid. Considered scientifically, to fill a jug means to exchange one filling for another” (ibid., 170).
- 23.
Paul Ziff distinguishes between gestures properly speaking and events that are fully explicable in terms of natural science: “There is a difference between my gnashing my teeth and the gnashing of my teeth. It is conceivable that by supplying the appropriate stimuli directly to the appropriate muscles one could affect the gnashing of my teeth. In the kind of case I envisage, I could not truly say ‘I was gnashing my teeth’ though I could say “My teeth were gnashing’ and perhaps add ‘It felt queer.’” See Ziff, “About Behaviorism in The Philosophy of Mind, ed. V.C. Chappell (New York: Dover, 1981, 149). A purely scientific explanation of what is involved in my teeth gnashing would enable one to supply the appropriate stimuli directly to the appropriate muscles in order to elicit that physical event. But one would still neither have explained nor elicited the human behavior that consists of my gnashing my teeth.
- 24.
Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy, trans. John W. Harvey (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), 208.
- 25.
The Streit theologian can also avail herself of this Heidegger-derived insight. But she understands it as a means of restoring the expectant calmness of metaphysical innocence represented by the women approaching the tomb—an innocence we have somehow lost—after which we must struggle with the thrilling paradox of divinity. Alternatively, for the Gelassenheit theologian we must first struggle to attain metaphysical innocence before we can move into the expectant calmness associated with the holy.
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Dillard, P.S. (2016). Deconstructive Scriptural Meaning. In: Non-Metaphysical Theology After Heidegger. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58480-9_4
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