Interpreting Excess: Jean-Luc Marion, Saturated Phenomena, and Hermeneutics

8 Revelation: The Phenomenon of God’s Appearing

8 Revelation: The Phenomenon of God’s Appearing Having considered each mode of saturation individually, Marion concludes his taxonomy of saturated phenomena by introducing a phenomenon that is saturated in all four divisions of Kant’s table of categories. This final instance of saturation is the phenomenon of ‘‘revelation,’’1 which he proposes as ‘‘the last possible variation of the phenomenality of the phenomenon inasmuch as given . . . the paradox to the second degree and par excellence, which encompasses all types of paradox’’ (BG 235/327). The account of Revelation is the most frequently criticized section of Being Given, with Dominique Janicaud and others suggesting that by introducing a theological domain, Marion compromises his repeated insistence that he is engaged in phenomenology rather than in theology.2 This controversy is exacerbated by suspicions about the influence of Marion’s own religious beliefs on his work, prompted by his decision to offer Jesus Christ as the sole example and paradigm of Revelation.3 I will not enter into this controversy as such, but will use it as evidence to support my contention that—just as with other saturated phenomena, Revelation does not simply appear in itself, of itself, and on the basis of itself. Rather, Revelation only appears in a hermeneutic space where it is recognized as revelatory. This hermeneutic space is opened by the faith of a recipient. I argue here that Marion’s theory of saturated phenomena leads him to give an account of Revelation and faith that is contrary to the Christian tradition, which he proposes as his paradigm of Revelation. As this can be demonstrated only in the context of Christian theology, I 178 necessarily examine in some detail the understanding of Revelation in the Christian theological tradition. Nevertheless, my primary interest is not theological at all. I am arguing that there is a fundamental hermeneutic element implicit in the examples Marion describes, and that his theory of saturated phenomena should be modified to include this. Similarly, I make no claim to be presenting a universal or comprehensive account of Revelation as a religious phenomenon. Therefore, I will not address the issue of how Revelation and faith are understood in religions other than Christianity. Although I am optimistic that my account of Revelation and faith in Christianity could be applied fruitfully to other religions as well, assessing such an application is not the concern of this study. After outlining Marion’s own position (with limited critical intervention ), the consequences of which are clearest in his account of the Gospel incident of the journey to Emmaus, I set out an alternative and explicitly hermeneutic account of Revelation. In this alternative account, Revelation ’s appearance is set in a complex circular relationship with the recipient ’s response of faith: Revelation’s appearance depends upon the recipient’s faith, which is in turn given by God’s initiative in Revelation. I then demonstrate that this understanding of the interrelationship of Revelation and faith is far more consistent with the Christian tradition than is Marion’s account. Finally, I show that Marion’s account of ‘‘revelation ’’ as a saturated phenomenon also conflicts with his own accounts of Revelation and faith in other texts, which instead support my account of Revelation’s appearing in the hermeneutic context of faith. Revelation as a Saturated Phenomenon Marion first proposed the concept of saturated phenomena in an essay from 1988 entitled ‘‘The Possible and Revelation,’’ which briefly mentions saturated phenomena in its closing pages. Four years later, he elaborated on the concept in an essay entitled ‘‘The Saturated Phenomenon’’ (1992), which he later revised and incorporated into book 4 of Being Given (1997). Marion’s understanding of saturation is consistent across these three texts, and many of his examples, including Revelation, are already present in the 1992 essay. In Being Given, he develops these examples much more clearly and fully, and also identifies Revelation as a distinctive fifth type of saturated phenomenon that includes all four of the possible modes of saturation. Paradoxically, while Marion’s claims about Revelation are much more dramatic in Being Given, the concerns which lie behind those claims are more explicit in the earlier essays. I begin this Revelation: The Phenomenon of God’s Appearing 179 section by outlining these concerns before summarizing his account of Revelation in Being Given, along with the consequences of this position for his understanding of the relation between...