God after Metaphysics: A Theological Aesthetic

Introduction

1 The guiding question of this work is “How can we think God after metaphysics ?” I would like, however, to add immediately a caveat: the word “after” here does not necessarily mean “against” or “without.” I take “after” in the following three senses: (a) as posterior (post) in order, chronological or otherwise , (b) as accordance (secundum), in the sense that we say that a painting is after Rubens, and (c) as pursuance (petitio), in the sense of one “going after” something, or “being after” someone—a quest, but also a questioning. This means that the thought of God sought here is to be at once, according to the metaphysical tradition (secundum), and yet different or otherwise (post) than this tradition. This can occur only through a questioning (petitio) of our conceptual cluster of divine attributes such as being, omnipresence, omnipotence, omniscience, actuality, and eternity. I do not pretend to replace the old metaphysical categories with some other ones, newly discovered perhaps , outside or beyond metaphysics. What I seek, instead, are certain topoi within the history of philosophy, notions or paradigms that are usually less emphasized and often overlooked or forgotten. The thinking of God that will emerge through such a topology is that of a personal God rather than a conIntroduction God after Metaphysics 2 ceptual one; a God to be reached through the relationships generated by the prosopon and the icon; a God that exists in the temporality of the kairos and appears in the sudden moment of the exaiphnes (part 1); a God who is better understood by the doxological language of praise and in the music of hymns rather than by the systematic logos of theology (part 2); a God, finally, that touches us and scandalously invites us to touch Him back: inaugurating an entirely new order of knowledge as the hiatus between the Self and the Other, the abysmal subject/object dualism effortlessly vanishes in the chiasm of the touch (part 3). The term “aesthetics” also, as it is used in the subtitle and throughout this work—it should be immediately emphasized—has little to do with the beautiful as understood by that branch of philosophy that deals with the notion of beauty and the fine arts (inaugurated by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten in the late eighteenth century). It is rather used in its original Greek sense of aisthanomai: to feel by means of one’s senses. This is the meaning that the term “aesthetics” has in Kant’s first Critique, for example. In the very beginning of that section of The Critique of Pure Reason entitled “Transcendental Aesthetics,” Kant defines “aesthetics” as “sensibility,” that is, “the capacity (receptivity ) for receiving representations through the mode in which we are affected by objects” (A19). Following Kant’s definition, then, we could describe Theological Aesthetics as precisely that field which Kant’s “Transcendental Aesthetics” had always excluded: that field that would consider God as a possible “object” of experience (B73). A field that would explore the possibility of God to be given; an “intuition” of God, if you like—be it maximalistic or minimalistic—an intuition that would not be immediately paired with understanding to produce concepts, but rather, it will leave behind whatever concepts understanding has formed in order to relocate the encounter with God in this capacity to receive—a capacity performed by our senses. Theological Aesthetic presented here, then, aspires to bring God back to the human flesh, and by doing so, by reenacting the incarnational event (precisely thanks to the historical Incarnation), we will be able to respond to Kant’s challenging axiom that “intuitions without concepts are blind” (A51/B75). (The first part of this work, thus, quite properly, discusses a blind vision.) At the same time, however, it is the rapture of the beautiful, or as the Greeks understood it,1 the call (kaleo) that the beautiful (to kalon) has first extended to us that enables our response in terms of sensibility and receptivity, in terms of aesthetics. This double principle of aesthetics, as the perception of the sensible and as the attraction that the sensible exercises in order to be perceived, constitutes the theoretical backbone of Hans Urs von Balthasar’s The Glory of the Lord,2 a work that bears as a subtitle the indication “A Theological Aesthetics.” As homage to von Balthasar’s thought and in acknowledgment of my indebtedness to it, I have chosen to keep the same subtitle for the present work. [18.118.254.94] Project MUSE...