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Hermeneutics and the God of Promise
- Fordham University Press
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Hermeneutics and the God of Promise M E R O L D W E S T P H A L In The God Who May Be, Richard Kearney has given us a gift whose power to provoke thought is out of proportion to its small size. Its opening sentences read as follows: ‘‘God neither is nor is not but may be. That is my thesis in this volume. What I mean by this is that God, who is traditionally thought of as act or actuality, might better be rethought as possibility. To this end I am proposing here a new hermeneutics of religion which explores and evaluates two rival ways of interpreting the divine—the eschatological and the onto-theological.’’1 Before turning to the central thesis about ‘‘is’’ and ‘‘may be,’’ about actuality and possibility, I want to look at its corollary, the ‘‘new hermeneutics of religion.’’ We can call this Kearney’s methodological thesis if we notice (1) that it is a substantive and not merely a formal commitment, and (2) that as such it belongs to the human theory being set forth; it is not a kind of Prologue in Heaven, spoken sub specie aeternitatis from some neutral, transhuman (non)point of view. In other words, the new hermeneutics we are to explore seeks to exempt from the hermeneutical circle neither the hermeneutical stance in general nor the particular commitments that make up this specific hermeneutic. The new hermeneutics revolves around the distinction between the eschatological and the ontotheological. With Kearney, I want to affirm the importance of the eschatological. I believe our God talk should be at once future-oriented and metafuture-oriented.2 Such es78 chatologically oriented God talk should inform our epistemology, our ethics, and our spirituality. However, that means it must inform our metaphysics as well. If in faith we are to be a people of hope, God will have to be the God of hope (Romans 15:13).3 Moreover, I think that overcoming ontotheology is an important task for theology and the philosophy of religion, the disciplines that inform and critique our God talk.4 So it would seem we are in the same ball park. But perhaps not on quite the same page, if I may mix my metaphors . Kearney has told me he suspects that I, the Protestant, will be more sympathetic to Aquinas than he, the Catholic; and, as we shall see, he was right. However, perhaps he did not suspect that I would be more Hegelian than he. It seems to me that Kearney treats the eschatological and the ontotheological as mutually exclusive. Over against his Kierkegaardian either/or, I wish to suggest a Hegelian both/ and, which of course signifies not addition but Aufhebung, or, to revert to Kierkegaardian language, not either/or but teleological suspension . He himself hints at such a possibility when he labels his position ‘‘onto-eschatology,’’ but he leaves this possibility undeveloped (GMB, 8). Unlike so many who bandy the term ‘‘ontotheology’’ about without giving it any precise meaning, Kearney tells us quite clearly how he uses the term. In the first place, ‘‘ontotheology’’ signifies ‘‘the old deity of metaphysics and scholasticism’’ (GMB, 2). The coin of the realm for this theology is the ‘‘abstract’’ categories of ‘‘pure being,’’ such as ousia, hyperousia, esse, essentia, substantia, causa sui, ipsum esse, and actus purus (GMB, 2, 23). Second, the use of these categories is motivated by a desire for a ‘‘plenitude of presence,’’ the untrammeled vision that would be ‘‘absolute knowledge’’ (GMB, 2, 61). Third, the result is a ‘‘disembodied cause, devoid of dynamism and desire,’’ or, in other words, an impersonal God (GMB, 3). Kearney’s brief but splendid phenomenology of persona-prosopon as eschaton not as telos (i.e., a fulfillable, predictable, foreseeable goal) reflects his own desire (no pretense of disinterested reflection here) to preserve the biblical sense of a personal God, ‘‘an eschatological God who trans- figures and desires’’ (GMB, 9).5 There is a distinct echo here of a Lutheran, Pascalian, Kierkegaardian, and Heideggerian preference for the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob over the God of the philosophers. As a matter of fact, all three dimensions of ontotheology so far presented correspond to the account Heidegger gives in his own critique . First, ontotheology revolves around such categories as ground, Hermeneutics and the God of Promise 79 [54.225.1.66] Project MUSE (2024-03-19 04:58 GMT) ratio, causa...