Persons in Relation: An Essay on the Trinity and Ontology

2: Theological Conditioning?

2 Theological Conditioning? 1. The Notion of “Self” and the Modernist Theology of God In this chapter, I endeavor to show that theology responded to the modernist emphasis on understanding “self” and “personhood” as expressive of an individual, rational subject (e.g., Descartes, Kant, Locke, Hume, Nietzsche, etc.1 ) by speaking about God as an ideal, criterial definition of the state of being a dynamic and relational subject. Theologians stressed that God is not an individual being, self-enclosed and isolated in his own atemporal world. God is rather a relational subject, who is open to the other and who is not an isolated self. One should not here mistakenly think that this counterargument is the originating source of the conviction that appeared in the last quarter of the twentieth century, which states that the Trinity is an expression of a sheer state of absolute relationality. This last conviction, as I will discuss in the ensuing part, was shaped by a postmodernist total rejection of the notion of “transcendental self,” along with its alternative one-sided transcendentalization of the notion of “being-toward-another.” The previous claim that God is a relational being is not yet a theological total rejection of the modernist notion of “self.” It is rather an attempt to marry the notions of “individual” and “relational,” which are opposed to each other in the modernist context, first by understanding “self” as an expression of a single entity in a state of flux, and, secondly, by rejecting the claim that the notion of “relational personhood” does not have in its definition a recognizable place for the idea of individuality. Noticeable here is that the attempt to marry “relational” with “individual” in the theological reasoning about God (and God’s relation to the human) stands shoulder-to-shoulder with 1. For critical analyses and assessments of this understanding of selfhood in the literature of modernist thinkers, see Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989), 127–210; and Robert C. Solomon, Continental Philosophy Since 1750: The Rise and Fall of the Self (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 7:23–72, 35 a parallel concern about importing the notion of “infinite” (which is basic in the doctrine of God) into the notion of the “self’s” circle of discussion and interpretation. This attempt represents willingness to incorporate into the philosophical knowledge of human nature the ideas of “transcendence” and “mystery,” which are central to the religious hermeneutics of “being” and “existence.” The purpose of this incorporation is to show that the self can be fully itself, or can be fully its own being, when its relational mode of existence does not obscure, but rather reveals or unmasks, the infinite dynamicity of its particular (individual) character and existence. Needless to say, this theological attempt to incorporate the notions of “infinite” and “mystery” into the discussion about “personhood” and “self” was a response to a major philosophical contrasting in modernity of the notion of the “infinite” with the notion of “relational.” The belief in the incommensurability of the notions of “relational personhood” and “infinity” has a very important metaphysical background that is related to the dissociation of the metaphysical, religious concepts of “transcendence,” “infinity,” and “beyond-ness”—concepts usually used in relation to the divine—from the relational and personal dimensions of the historico-experiential forms of existence and being-ness, which were central to the modernist philosophical discourse about the human reality, starting from Descartes and Kant, and culminating in Fichte. Among these philosophers, it is Fichte who ultimately believes that the possibility of knowledge about God is rationally impossible because the realm of rational thinking is sharply separated from the metaphysical realm of the concept of God. The impact of Fichte’s belief on theological thinking in the context of modernity is immeasurable. Therefore I now turn to his thinking. 1. J. G. FICHTE ON GOD’S KNOWABILITY AND BEING Essentially, Fichte argues that “thought” is a totally inadequate concept for the idea of Deity. In a nominalist fashion, he rather stresses that God’s being can never be known through, or in, any allegedly historical revelatory means.2 2. J. G. Fichte, Attempt to a Critique of All Revelations (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970). For a good analysis of Fichte’s view of God’s knowability, see Eberhard Jüngel, God as the Mystery of the World: On the Foundation of the Theology of the Crucified One in the...