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14 one The Disappearance of Philosophical Theology in Hermeneutic Philosophy Historicizing and Hermeneuticizing the Philosophical Idea of God Ben Vedder In this essay I present a number of perspectives that are, in my view, typical of a hermeneutical approach to the ‘‘philosophy of God.’’ What is implied in such a hermeneutical approach? The simple fact that the hermeneutical task is by definition endless already brings some special problems to the philosophy of God. From that endlessness, as developed in the work of Schleiermacher, Dilthey, Heidegger, and, joined specifically to dialogue, Gadamer, there arises the immediate question of whether the philosophical idea of God as ‘‘highest being’’ has not passed over into a sense of God as withdrawn or withdrawing precisely because of the transformation of philosophy itself by or even into hermeneutics. To be sure, a negative theology and mystical approach to God have long remained attentive to a sense of God as withdrawn or withdrawing from thought, but this fact only improves my question: could it be that the current popularity of those approaches in theology and prayer in fact depends on the contemporary hermeneutic turn in our thinking? This is, at least, a suggestion I wish to entertain here. Strange as it may at first seem, one could argue that Spinoza is among the first modern thinkers to develop a theory of hermeneutics.1 As the proponent The Disappearance of Philosophical Theology 15 of a philosophical conception of God, Spinoza defines the absolute as ‘‘infinite substance’’ in a way that involves a sharp distinction between knowledge and faith. Real truth of God is to be reached only in rational knowledge. A believer is unfamiliar with what it is to think in Spinoza’s sense of thinking, and must therefore seek a true life not in intellectual insight into the truth, which is beyond the capacities of the believer, but instead simply in obedience. Furthermore , reading and interpreting the Bible is good for such believers only insofar as it educates them into a way of life that is in agreement or at least harmony with reason—even if, again, the believer does not understand reason. It is this lack of rational knowledge in the believer that leads Spinoza to describe a hermeneutical approach to the Bible that today can seem rather modern. However, it is important to keep in mind that it is indeed precisely the notion of a lack of rationality that brings Spinoza to this hermeneutical approach. Spinoza thus marks a distinction between philosophical knowledge of God and the hermeneutic approach of believers. For Spinoza, the philosophical approach is the most important of the two; rational knowledge is knowledge apart from words and independent of historical situation. Today, of course, things are virtually the opposite: it is the hermeneutical approach that seems to us the most ‘‘reasonable’’ way to God. Knowledge, we now think, is possible only through words and in finite, historical situations. Just what is this hermeneutical way, and what consequences follow from it? Does the God of hermeneutics not have some specific features that ensue from the hermeneutical approach as such—just as the traditional philosophical idea of God as ‘‘highest being’’ has features that ensue from the traditional philosophical approach? In what follows, I sketch the development of this hermeneutical approach, together with what is presupposed in relation to the philosophical approach to God. My starting point is the work of Schleiermacher. I. The Feeling of Absolute Dependence In Schleiermacher we find the origin of the separate paths of philosophical theology and hermeneutical theology. Strictly speaking, Schleiermacher rejects the philosophical approach to God. Philosophy is not an avenue to God. In Schleiermacher, the endless interaction of thinking and speaking, and of dialectic and hermeneutics, is a consequence of the impossibility of absolute knowledge and the limitation of knowledge to the province of finitude and history. This limitation, further, is based on the finitude of the human subject, which cannot constitute itself, but feels its absolute dependence in immediate consciousness. A human being cannot think the whole of the universe, because he or she uses thinking as the path or avenue to that task. Thinking is thus not a help but a hindrance. ‘‘The reason for this failure of our enterprise,’’ writes Schleiermacher, ‘‘is given by the fact that we wish to think the transcendent ’’ (D 270).2 Thinking will never give us the whole of contact with the universe. Accordingly, Schleiermacher rejects the philosophical and rational [3.22...

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