861J. Diller and A. Kasher (eds.), Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities,DOI 10.1007/978-94-007-5219-1_72, © Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

z h t e ῖ n t ὸ n q e ό n , e ἰ ἄ r a g e y h l a f ή s e i a n a ὐ t ὸ n k a ὶ e ὕ r o i e n , k a ί g e o ὐ m a k r ὰ n ἀ p ὸ ἑ n ὸ V ἑ k ά s t o u ἡ m ῶ n ὑ p ά r c o n t a . P R A X E I S D G I I , D D G I I …so that people might seek God, even perhaps grope for him and fi nd him, though indeed he is not far from any one of us. Acts of the Apostles 17:27 (NAB)

One (Plotinus). That than which nothing greater can be thought (Anselm). Actus purus (Aquinas). Prima Verità (Catherine of Sienna). Causa sui (Descartes). The feeling of absolute trust and dependence (Schleiermacher). Ultimate Concern (Tillich). Ultimate Reality (Hick, et al . ). She Who Is (Johnson). Mother, Lover, Friend (McFague). Jesucristo liberador (Sobrino). Augustine’s trepid question remains as relevant today as it was at the end of the fourth century CE ‘What do I love when I love you, my God?’ ( Confessiones X, vi). Ultimate reality persists in its obscurity inasmuch as its lucidity. Divine immanence is incessantly met with divine transcendence: kataphasis-apophasis , exitus-reditus , dialectical chiaroscuro . Every attempt at comprehending ultimate reality withers in its own inadequacy: “Of God, we say: what wonder is it if we do not comprehend him? For if you comprehend it, it is not God.” 1 Ultimate reality eludes every name, every predicate, and even every denial. In fi nity, mystery, and the question of being confront the human person in every generation.

D. L. Wallenfang (*) Division of Theology , Walsh University , OH , USA e-mail: donaldwallenfang@gmail.com

Aperture of Absence: Jean-Luc Marion on the God Who ‘Is Not’

Donald L. Wallenfang

1 Augustine, Sermo 117, 3 [ De Deo loquimur, quid mirum si non comprehenderis? Si enim compre-hendis, non est Deus ].

862 D.L. Wallenfang

Contemporary French philosopher Jean-Luc Marion (1946–) approaches the question of ultimate reality with much trepidation inside a hope that ultimate reality ‘is not far from any one of us.’ In order to liberate ultimate reality from models and heu-ristics framed in a supposedly panoptic ‘metaphysics of presence,’ Marion introduces a nuanced distinction between the ‘conceptual idol’ and the ‘ phenomenological icon.’ By pushing through the limits of ontic and ontological ‘conditions of possibility’ for experience, Marion effectively opens phenomenality to the further possibility of impos-sibility . Marion, in effect, liberates (1) human subjectivity, (2) all phenomena that may appear as such, and (3) ultimate reality and the possibility of its communicativeness to humanity. This threefold liberation takes place by introducing a third phenomenologi-cal reduction – one beyond objectivity (Husserl), beyond ontology (Heidegger) – that anterior to anteriority: givenness ( Gegebenheit ; donation ). By reducing a phenomenon to its (unconditioned) a priori dynamic of givenness, a phenomenon assumes its due right to show itself in the measure that it gives itself by itself . Ultimate reality, thereby, can be named precisely the impossibility of possibility – the ultimate in-breaking of givenness that saturates any horizon assigned to that which may appear, in the end giving itself in the form of a shortage.

From Conditions of Possibility to (Im)Possibility Without Condition

In addition to his erudite scholarship on seventeenth-century philosopher René Descartes, Marion has stretched the phenomenological method to its assurgent application in theology. His trilogy on the phenomenological method – Réduction et donation (1989), Etant donné (1997), De Surcroît (2001) – has caused a wave of consternation among some (philosophers?), and elation among others (theolo-gians?). 2 While Marion is not alone in employing the phenomenological method in the theological realm (cf . the work of Michel Henry, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Paul Ricoeur, Emmanuel Levinas, et al . ), his contributions directly stretch the phenom-enological method as developed by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. 3 Even though Husserl and Heidegger identi fi ed and worked along (but without crossing) a distinct border that separated theology from philosophy, Marion regards such a fi ssure as unwarranted. For Marion, the question of divine revelation remains perti-nent in the realm of critical philosophy inasmuch as the question of divine revela-tion is a question about possibility . For “higher than actuality stands possibility . We can understand phenomenology only by seizing upon it as a possibility.” 4 While

2 Cf . Janicaud ( 2000 ) for a general presentation of the issues at stake. 3 Cf . Marion ( 1998 , pp. 203–205) on Marion’s proposal of a third phenomenological reduction: an epoché that discloses the original form of givenness in phenomena; ‘so much reduction, so much givenness.’ 4 Heidegger ( 1962 , p. 63, para. 7).

863Aperture of Absence: Jean-Luc Marion on the God Who ‘Is Not’

Marion is careful to draw the distinction between the phenomenon of revelation and that of Revelation – ‘Revelation’ appears in the fi gure of a speci fi c language of faith and religious tradition – he seeks to challenge and subvert the notion of suf fi cient reason as authoritative for phenomenality.

At this juncture, it may be helpful to make explicit the basic heuristic structure of the science of phenomenology. Phenomenology ultimately refers to the science of interpretation of any and all phenomena-data: “any act of interpretation involves at least three realities: some phenomenon to be interpreted, someone interpreting that phenomenon, and some interaction between these fi rst two realities.” 5 This complex process of interpretation can be described in two primary movements: (1) the move-ment of the human subject toward the phenomenon (called ‘intentionality’), and (2) the movement of the phenomenon toward the subject (called ‘intuition’) (Fig. 1 ).

Though overly simplistic, this heuristic is helpful for understanding what is at stake within the polemics of phenomenology, especially when considering the ques-tion of ultimate reality. Further, this heuristic must be modi fi ed to demonstrate Marion’s phenomenological reduction to givenness (Fig. 2 ).

In this modi fi ed heuristic illustration, the many arrows surrounding the phenom-enon indicate its abundant and multidimensional givenness. The dashed arrow signi-fying a giving intuition is modi fi ed to indicate that, for Marion, intuition is ultimately a function of intentionality and can even be a limiting factor for a phenomenon’s originary givenness. 6 Thinking phenomenality in terms of givenness expands possi-bility to include the possibility of phenomena that saturate the intentional aim of the human subject. Marion directly challenges the primacy of the transcendental ego: “in the realm of givenness, (the transcendental ego) no longer decides the phenome-non, but receives it; or else, from ‘master and possessor’ of the phenomenon, it

5 Tracy ( 1987 , p. 10). 6 Cf . Marion ( 2002a , pp. 184–187).

intuition

intentionalityphenomenonhuman subject

Fig. 1 General phenomeno-logical heuristic

intuition

phenomenon

intentionality

human subject givenness

Fig. 2 Marionian phenomenological heuristic

864 D.L. Wallenfang

becomes receiver.” 7 Marion’s primary polemic is against the so-called principle of suf fi cient reason inasmuch as such a principle strips the phenomenon of its agency for its own appearing and reduces it to a function under the rubric ‘intentionality.’ In other words, emphasizing subjective intentionality as the primary (if not only) operation in phenomenality robs the phenomenon of its possibility of appearing according to its own particular genius, design and mode of givenness.

The principle of suf fi cient reason, itself a product of the Western Enlightenment, establishes necessary exigencies for human experience through metaphysical sche-mata and language whose roots extend as far back as thinking itself. The legacy of such fi gures as René Descartes (1596–1650), Gottfried Leibniz (1646–1716), David Hume (1711–1776), Gotthold Lessing (1729–1781), and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) bequeaths a brand of thinking that takes nothing for granted and virtually outlaws the possibility of divine revelation as such – at least a type of revelation that would transgress the established boundaries set by the principle of suf fi cient reason. For this principle demands all phenomena to be reckoned according to a priori conditions of possibility – metaphysical boundaries that constitute the supposed playing- fi eld of phenomenality, boundaries sketched in terms of universality (over against particularity), causality, presence, substance and accidents, necessity and contingency, horizons of consciousness. A suf fi cient reason for the postulate of ulti-mate reality is even demanded: ‘Ultimate reality, please tell me your cause.’

Marion fi nds that such conditions set undue limits on phenomeno logical possi-bility insofar as they determine a phenomenon prior to its possible appearing. This mode of transcendental idealism is evident in Husserl’s work as well. Marion notes that for Husserl “the intention always anticipates what it has not yet seen, the result being that the unseen has, from the start, the rank of a pre-seen, a merely belated visible, without fundamentally irreducible novelty, in short a pre-visible.” 8 This is to say that anything that could appear can suf fi ciently be predicted to appear vis-à-vis that which has already appeared and has thus established a probable, universal and reasonable panorama within which a particular phenomenon may appear as such. For Marion, such a priori boundaries are insuf fi cient and limiting. Marion contends that suf fi ciency is not a ‘range-for-viewing’ to be set by subjectivity, but rather that which is determined by phenomena as they give themselves by themselves. In such manner does Marion introduce the notion of ‘counter-intentionality’ in which the phenomenon determines the subject rather than vice versa. 9 Likewise does Marion introduce the notion of the ‘saturated phenomenon’ – a phenomenon that saturates subjective intentionality with a burst of phenomenal intuition, a phenomenon that bedazzles by its supreme degree of givenness, e.g., the saturated phenomena of the event, the idol, the fl esh, and the icon. 10

7 Ibid . , p. 188. 8 Ibid., p. 186. 9 Cf . ibid . , pp. 266–267. 10 Cf . ibid . , pp. 225–233.

865Aperture of Absence: Jean-Luc Marion on the God Who ‘Is Not’

Iconicity as Gateway to Ultimate Reality

Taking one form of the saturated phenomenon as posited by Marion, let us turn to the ef fi cacy of the icon as a portal to ultimate reality. In his early work, L’idole et la distance (1977), Marion proposes a thoroughly apophatic theology in response to Nietzsche’s pronouncement, ‘God is dead!’ For Marion, the key question from which to frame a response to this tremendous proclamation is, ‘What God?’ Marion replies, ‘The God of metaphysics is dead.’ In Marion’s assessment, the god of metaphysics is not the one, true and living God about whom the scriptures testify, but an idol to be razed. Whereas the god of meta-physics can only appear in terms of substance, causality and concepts that satisfy the strictures of the principle of suf fi cient reason, the God who lives ‘is not’ but rather loves and gives. For Marion, the juxtaposition of the idol vis-à-vis the icon is a key paradigm for approaching and understanding the question of divine denomination, or (un-)naming God. The idol is fashioned according to humanity’s attempt to envisage the divine whereby “human experience precedes the face that (a particular) divinity assumes in it … the idol fi xes the divine for us permanently, for a commerce where the human hems in the divine from all angles.” 11 The idol, formed strictly according to human determination, acts not as a translucent mediator that discloses divine mystery, but as a mirror re fl ecting only the human gazer, exhausting every aim, allowing no invisibility to illuminate the gaze – in effect burying the gaze through narcissistic inversion. 12 As such, a philosophical or theo-logical thought that “expresses a concept of what it then names ‘God’” functions precisely as an idol:

The concept consigns to a sign what at fi rst the mind grasps with it ( concipere, capere ); but such a grasp is measured not so much by the amplitude of the divine as by the scope of the capacitas , which can fi x the divine in a speci fi c concept only at the moment when a concep-tion of the divine fi lls it, hence appeases, stops, and freezes it. 13

A prime example of such an instance is Descartes’s naming of God as causa sui , i.e., God as the cause of Godself. 14 In this particular example, Descartes superim-poses the category of causality onto ‘God,’ thus determining ‘God’ qua ‘God’ within the limits of human reason and understanding. The human gaze remains trans fi xed upon its glamorous idol that merely con fi rms a particular mode of

11 Marion ( 2001 , p. 5); cf . Marion ( 1991 , pp. 9–10): “The idol presents itself to man’s gaze in order that representation, and hence knowledge, can seize hold of it … it captivates the gaze only inas-much as the gazeable comprises it.” 12 Marion God Without Being ( 1991 , pp. 12–13). 13 Ibid . , p. 16. 14 Ibid . , p. 16; 35–36. A more recent metaphysical construal of the divine, to serve as an apt spar-ring partner for Marion’s project, is Robert Cummings Neville’s ‘indeterminate Being-itself.’ Cf . Neville ( 1968 ) .

866 D.L. Wallenfang

knowledge and the presuppositions of its neat and tidy logic, viz., a sterile rendering of ‘more of the same.’ If God is conceived and approached in solely human terms and categories, God is reduced to a supreme being among all beings, a primordial cause among causes, the God of onto-theology – essentially an existent among existents, a creature among creatures. 15 Such is the fate of the conceptual idol of ultimate reality. 16

The icon, on the other hand, “does not result from a vision but provokes one.” 17 The icon maintains the presentation of the invisible by summoning the gaze to surpass itself by preventing a freezing of the visible, instead “giving rise to an in fi nite gaze.” 18 In the icon, the human gazer is met by the counter-gaze of the re-presentative icon; the icon bears an “intention that envisages,” coming to it from an “elsewhere whose invisible strangeness saturates the visibility of the face with meaning.” 19 When one gazes upon the icon, one must “(renounce) all grasping ( aisthesis )” and “(submit) to an apocalyptic exposure”: “we become a visible mirror of an invisible gaze that subverts us in the measure of its glory.” 20 Unlike the idol which fi xes the concept as the ‘essence’ of God, “the icon obliges the concept to welcome the distance of in fi nite depth … indeterminable by con-cept.” 21 The concept is no longer employed to determine an essence but rather to determine an intention : “that of the invisible advancing into the visible and inscribing itself therein by the very reference it imposes from this visible to the invisible.” 22 In the event of the mutual beholding between the prosopic icon and the human person, a profound union occurs, which “increases in the measure of distinction, and reciprocally.” 23 Distance obtains through the course of prosopic other-ing and mutual reciprocity. The icon thereby becomes the paradigmatic fi gure of distance and a communion of persons.

15 Cf . Tracy ( 1981 , p. 409): “For these reasons, the major explicitly analogical traditions in theol-ogy have correctly insisted that in the theological use of analogies, the dissimilarities between God and world are as great as the similarities; the via eminentiae is possible only on condition of its constant fi delity to the via negationis .” 16 Even the fate of the predicate ‘ultimate reality’! It, too, can quickly devolve into a conceptual idol. 17 Marion, God Without Being ( 1991 , p. 17). 18 Ibid . , p. 18. 19 Ibid., p. 21. 20 Ibid., p. 22. 21 Ibid., p. 23. 22 Ibid., p. 23. 23 Ibid., p. 23; cf . ibid . , p . 104: “Distance: the gap that separates de fi nitively only as much as it uni fi es, since what distance gives consists in the gap itself”; and Marion, The Idol and Distance ( 2001 , p. 156): “Distance brings about separation in order that love should receive all the more intimately the mystery of love. Alterity grows as much as union – solely in distance, anterior and perennial, permanent and primordial.”

867Aperture of Absence: Jean-Luc Marion on the God Who ‘Is Not’

Plenty Good Room for Revelation

Just as distance functions as the non-reductive sine qua non for prosopic relationality, the icon functions as the authentic paradigm of agapic love – that alone which traverses the relational distance insofar as it refuses to reduce the other to the same. In both L’idole et distance and Dieu sans l’être , Marion draws from the apophatic theological construal of Dionysius the Areopagite (ca. sixth century CE), wherein Dionysius construes the notion of ‘Goodness’ iconically and thereby dissolves any a priori conditions of possibility that would otherwise occlude divine glory. Marion issues a critique of Aquinas’ prioritization of the analogical predicate ‘Being’ ( ens ) for God, and instead retrieves Dionysius’ preference for the term ‘Goodness.’ The latter term opens the necessary distance for the human person to respond with an inexhaustible offering of praise to a non-essentialized God – a ‘God without Being’:

To begin with, (Dionysius) does not pretend that goodness constitutes the proper name of the Requisite, but that in the apprehension of goodness the dimension is cleared where the very possibility of a categorical statement concerning God ceases to be valid, and where the reversal of denomination into praise becomes inevitable. To praise the Requisite as such, hence as goodness, amounts to opening distance. Distance neither asks nor tolerates that one fi ll it but that one traverse it, in an in fi nite praise that feeds on the impossibility or, bet-ter, the impropriety of the category. The fi rst praise, the name of goodness, therefore does not offer any “most proper name” and decidedly abolishes every conceptual idol of “God” in favor of the luminous darkness where God manifests (and not masks) himself, in short, where he gives himself to be envisaged by us. 24

In effect, ‘Goodness’ does not so much name God, by fi xing God in temporal-spatial dimensions or philosophical concepts or even biblical metaphors, as expresses the recognition of an opening of distance that allows lovers to pursue one another in the ‘luminous darkness’ of unfathomable manifestation. 25 In this case, distance indeed functions as a concept, not as codifying divinity but as proclaiming the acquiescence of the human subject to the iconic phenomenon of divine revelation – a saturated phenomenon that bedazzles the human subject with an in fi nite and exces-sive gaze of invisibility, manifest in the visibility of the face and in the audibility of the call. 26

24 Marion, God Without Being ( 1991 , p. 76). 25 Cf . Marion, The Idol and Distance ( 2001 , pp. 9, 24): “The icon properly manifests the nuptial distance that weds, without confusing, the visible and the invisible – that is, the human and the divine … (God) is Unthinkable, insofar as He reveals the distance of Goodness in the encounter of creation.” 26 Marion, God Without Being ( 1991 , pp. 95, 100–101); cf . Marion, The Idol and Distance ( 2001 , p. 144): “To move from a model of language in which the speaker makes an effort to take possession of meaning to a model in which the speaker receives meaning, with the Name, through homology: ‘to say divinely.’”

868 D.L. Wallenfang

Marion expands on the Dionysian notion of distance by identifying the dynamic movement that traverses the distance: agapic love. Agapic love is characterized by Marion in terms of ‘the gift’ ( le don ) and ‘giving’ ( donation ):

In the distance, only agape can put everything on earth, in heaven, and in hell, in giving, because agape alone, by de fi nition, is not known, is not – but gives (itself). At the heart of agape , following its fl ux as one follows a current that is too violent to go back up, too pro-found for one to know its source or valley, everything fl ows along the giving, and, by the wake traced in the water, but without grasping anything of it, everything indicates the direc-tion and meaning of distance. 27

In this passage Marion demonstrates how agape eludes the ontological catego-ries of ens / esse (but rather ‘is not’) in favor of an iconic and unlimited reality – one in which “love is not spoken, in the end, it is made” ( l’amour ne se dit pas, à la fi n, il se fait ). 28 Whereas determining ultimate reality as ‘Being,’ even analogously, freezes the divine in a stagnate metaphysical prison, Marion liberates ultimate real-ity according to agapic love, which alone ensures that the distance between human and divine is not fi lled in but promoted. For Marion, distance is not an entity, essence, cause or effect; rather, distance is that open space that facilitates the gift of communion between God and humanity.

Thus distance provokes an apophatic ‘mute decency’ (silence), admitting that “among the divine names, none exhausts God or offers the grasp or hold of a com-prehension of him.” 29 Yet Marion is careful to qualify such a claim by negating the tempting concession of intellectual laziness or complacency:

The unthinkable, as the distance of Goodness, gives itself – not to be comprehended but to be received. It is therefore not a question of giving up on comprehending (as if it were a question of comprehending, and not of being comprehended). It is a question of managing to receive that which becomes thinkable, or rather acceptable, only for the one who knows how to receive it. It is not a question of admitting distance despite its unthinkability, but of preciously receiving the unthinkable, as the sign and seal of the measureless origin of the distance that gives us our measure. If love reveals itself hermetically as distance (which is glossed by cause and goodness ) in order to give itself, only love will be able to welcome it. 30

This is an agapic, rather than a Gnostic, construal of the human-divine relation-ship, achieved according to the immeasurable order of agapic, interpersonal love: ‘to know is to love’ according to the ‘logic of love’ along the “horizon of ‘love without being.’” 31 Here reason operates according to the power of love (not merely

27 Marion, God Without Being ( 1991 , p. 106); cf . Marion, The Idol and Distance ( 2001 , p. 153): “Anterior distance conceives us because it engenders us. Anterior distance demands to be received because it more fundamentally gives us [the chance] to receive ourselves in it.” 28 Marion, God Without Being ( 1991 , p. 107 (p. 154 in original French text)). 29 Ibid . , p. 106. 30 Marion, The Idol and Distance ( 2001 , p. 155). 31 Horner ( 2005 , p. 135). Cf . Marion ( 2008 , p. 74): “But in this case, to see the invisible face, I must love it. Love, however, comes from charity. In consequence, one must hold that the natural phenome-non of the face of the other cannot be discovered except through the light of charity, that is, through

869Aperture of Absence: Jean-Luc Marion on the God Who ‘Is Not’

desire) that intends the good of the other and, thus, the full appearance of the other. 32 Yet the other’s appearing is not based on subjective intentionality alone, but on the acquiescence of the subject to the manifestation of the other – an interpersonal fi at to the bedazzling iconic radiance of the other. Especially in the case of receiving divine revelation in the form of aperture, one must surrender mastery, give in to the chase, yield to the gaze and pursuit – the simultaneous appearance and absence – of the Lover. 33

In the end, Marion insists not that ‘God is,’ but that ‘ God gives ’ (thereby eschew-ing onto-theo-logy): “The giving, in allowing to be divined how ‘it gives,’ a giving, offers the only accessible trace of He who gives.” 34 God is recognizable in the mani-fold gifts that pour forth from God, the givenness of all reality, and ultimately the very ‘ es gibt ’ of Godself, i.e., ‘ GXd gives .’ 35 It is through God’s givenness and giv-ing-ness that creation springs forth through distance: “ Because it forever ‘remains in an inaccessible light’ (1 Timothy 6:16) the unthinkable calls to participation beings that have no common measure with it – no common measure other than a reciprocal disproportion in distance.” 36 This participation in divine givenness is con-stituted by receptivity and reciprocity on the part of humanity: “Man therefore does not receive the gift as such except in welcoming the act of giving, that is, through repetition by giving himself … Only the gift of the gift can receive the gift.” 37 While Marion avoids establishing a vacuously cyclic ‘economy of exchange’ (within which no authentic gift can be given and received as such due to the phenomena of debt, currency, supply/demand, etc . ), he suggests that the phenomenological

the ‘auxiliary’ of Revelation. Without the revelation of the transcendence of love, the phenomenon of the face, and thus of the other, simply cannot be seen. This is an exemplary case of ‘Christian philosophy,’” and p. 152: “… only love can give access to the ‘great reason.’ The love revealed by the Word, hence by the Logos , is deployed as a logos , hence as a rationality. And a rationality by full right, because it allows us to reach the closest and most internal phenomena, those experienced by the fl esh which intuition saturates … But Christ has not only shown the logic of love, he has demonstrated and proven it in facts and acts by his passion and his resurrection”; Marion ( 2002c , p. 87): “Loving no longer consists trivially in seeing or in being seen, nor in desiring or inciting desire, but in experiencing the crossing of the gazes within, fi rst, the crossing of aims.” 32 Cf . Pascal ( 1995 , p. 127 [423–424 (277–278)]): “The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing: we know this in countless ways. I say that it is natural for the heart to love the universal being or itself, according to its allegiance, and it hardens itself against either as it chooses. You have rejected one and kept the other. Is it reason that makes you love yourself? It is the heart which perceives God and not the reason. That is what faith is: God perceived by the heart, not by the reason.” 33 Cf . Song of Songs 7:10–12, 14: “I am my beloved’s, / and his desire is for me. / Come, my beloved, / let us go forth into the fi elds, / and lodge in the villages; / let us go out early to the vine-yards, / and see whether the vines have budded, / whether the grape blossoms have opened / and the pomegranates are in bloom. / There I will give you my love … Make haste, my beloved, / and be like a gazelle/ or a young stag / upon the mountains of spices” (RSV). 34 Marion, God Without Being ( 1991 , p. 105). 35 Ibid . , p. 105. 36 Marion, The Idol and Distance ( 2001 , p. 156). 37 Ibid . , p. 166.

870 D.L. Wallenfang

reduction to givenness, including an ‘erotic reduction,’ lets phenomena appear as they give themselves in the fl esh , rather than obscuring the possibility of their giving by deciding upon a priori conditions for phenomenality. 38 In such a manner is a path for the possibility of the phenomenon of revelation opened, one which does not draw a line in the sand between what we can know and what we cannot, anymore than one may attempt to draw an impassable (read ‘impassible’) line between beings ( Seiendes ) and Being ( Sein ).

Opening onto a Third Way

With all of his concern for mitigating the royal prerogatives of metaphysics, as well as his overt Dionysian in fl uence, Marion has been identi fi ed as an apophatic thinker, though he himself resists such an easy label. In his early work, L’idole et distance (1977), Marion develops a thoroughly apophatic theology, in response to an overly kataphatic onto-theology that suffered its demise at the hands of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century ‘masters of suspicion.’ In fact, Marion devotes an entire chapter to the thought of Dionysius in this work. Likewise, Marion’s 1982 thesis, Dieu sans l’être , sounds a dark and opaque Dionysian tone. However, Marion can be seen nuancing an overtly apophatic position in his 1997 presentation, In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of “Negative Theology.” 39 In this essay, Marion presents what he calls a ‘third way’ for (un-)naming the divine. Prescinding from an exclusively apo-phatic position (or at least the caricature thereof), Marion suggests a third way to which both kataphatic and apophatic construals must yield. In this essay Marion still refers to his position as Dionysian, but further attempts to dissolve a binary ‘metaphysics of presence’ by asserting a ternary route of de-nomination whereby language functions pragmatically and liturgically by “transporting itself in the direc-tion of Him whom it denominates.” 40 Marion claims a pathway that is frozen neither in kataphaticism nor apophaticism, but extends through their dialectical dance in acts of prayer and praise, resulting in a ‘theology of absence,’ marked as such by the giving-ness of the saturated phenomenon.

As evinced above, the saturated phenomenon is a phenomenon which exceeds and saturates intentionality – an intentionality which tends to arrive at epistemologi-cal adequation (read ‘certainty’) through the concept, but is bedazzled in the face of the saturated phenomenon that eludes all circumscribing conceptual claims.

38 Cf . Horner, Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical Introduction ( 2005 , pp. 135–146) on the ‘erotic reduction’ proposed in Marion’s Le phénomène érotique . 39 Caputo and Scanlon ( 1999 , pp. 20–53) (including response of Jacques Derrida). Revised in Marion ( 2002b , pp. 128–162). 40 Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism ( 1999 , p. 27).

871Aperture of Absence: Jean-Luc Marion on the God Who ‘Is Not’

Language here functions solely as a vehicle of an erotic intentionality of the human subject, met by the bedazzling intuitive and iconic radiance of divine glory: “excess conquers comprehension and what language can say.” 41 In effect, and in the end, words are swallowed up by the Word: “ the theologian must go beyond the text to the Word .” 42 It is not by coincidence that Marion gives the name ‘ Hors-texte ’ (literally meaning ‘beyond the text’) to the second part of his Dieu sans l’être .

By citing this earlier text from Dieu sans l’être , one is left wondering if Marion’s position put forth in In the Name can in fact be called a ‘nuanced position.’ It appears that Marion is left conceding to the idol-o-clastic power of the apophatic. However, the nuance of Marion’s 1997 essay is to be found especially in his brief reference to the Heideggerian phenomenological as . Though Marion assesses Dionysius’ use of the preposition ‘as’ (‘hos) in L’idole et distance , the mention of Heidegger’s phe-nomenological as suggests a subtle inward (and perhaps subconscious) self-critique insofar as the phenomenological as signi fi es “the interpretive comprehension of what is aimed at on the basis of and to the measure of the intonation of the one who intends.” 43 For Heidegger, the event of appropriation ( Ereignis ) is shaped by the construction of meaning “when entities within-the-world are discovered along with the Being of Dasein – that is, when they have come to be understood.” 44 The phe-nomenological as acts in a prepositional way to mediate the distance between the perceiving subject and the self-disclosing phenomenon, especially in the instance of divine self-revelation. However, it is precisely this phenomenological as that opens the possibility of the ‘third way’ that Marion proposes in In the Name . Without the kataphatic sway of the linguistic as , there would be no intentionality to be saturated. The kataphatic as paves the way for the invisible aperture of absence to cross the threshold of visibility, only to disappear therein. 45 Distance is created as language serves as a bridge to span the distance without absolving it. Language functions pragmatically instead of predicatively or nominally: “It is no longer a matter of naming or attributing something to something, but of aiming in the direction of…, of relating to…, of comporting oneself towards…, of reckoning with … – in short of dealing with….” 46

In spite of Marion’s proposal of a ‘third way’ beyond the kataphatic or apophatic alone, one may be left to wonder if Marion (unintentionally) claims the ‘third way’ as a guise for an ultimately covert aphophatic theology. Is not an incarnational theology (read ‘Christian philosophy’) consonant with the iconicity of language ?

41 Ibid . , p. 40. 42 Marion, God Without Being ( 1991 , p. 149); cf . ibid . , p. 157: “In short, the ‘progress’ of theology works only to overcome the irreducible delay of the eucharistic interpretation of the text in relation to the manifestation of the Word. ” 43 Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism ( 1999 , p. 30). 44 Heidegger, Being and Time ( 1962 , p. 192, para. 32). 45 A more recent application of the phenomenological as in Marion’s work can be found in his essay, “The Recognition of the Gift” in Ciocan ( 2009 , pp. 15–28). 46 Caputo and Scanlon, God, the Gift, and Postmodernism ( 1999 , p. 30).

872 D.L. Wallenfang

Must language give leave to the power of manifestation, or does not manifestation of the invisible rely on the sacramental ef fi cacy of the written text just as the spoken word for its communicability? 47 To return to Heidegger, disclosure of meaning occurs in and through language – language as fl esh of thought rather than as dis-pensable vessel for the transport of the subject to the ‘observation deck’ from which to behold the self-manifesting phenomenon alone in its self-givenness. If ‘language is the house of Being,’ is it permissible to prescind so rapidly and amnestically from language within a sacramental view of the cosmos? These are the questions that Marion will have to face as a similar apophatic hymn of praise to that of his, echoes from the caverns of the ekklesía of hermeneutics, suspicion and deconstruction.

Nevertheless, Marion proffers considerable insights for thinking ultimate reality in postmodern times. Like his sixth-century counterpart, Dionysius, Marion urges vigilance on guard against fashioning particular images or conceptions of God into idols, or reducing ultimate reality to an absolute concept. Instead, ultimate reality is permitted to be precisely … – that denominated…, that eludes all naming and fi xed images, and yet permits the employment of language for the sake of praise, blessing and prayer. Such doxo logy can only be maintained via paths of puri fi cation, conver-sion and contemplation. The passageway of praise is found to be the Dionysian thoroughfare of unknowing, a space of distance maintained by the agapic inter-course of countenances that gaze upon one another in utmost prosopic intimacy. Deus absconditus. Deus revelatus.

References

Caputo, John D., and Michael J. Scanlon (eds.). 1999a. God, the gift, and postmodernism . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

Chauvet, Louis-Marie. 1995. Symbol and sacrament: A sacramental reinterpretation of Christian existence . Trans. Patrick Madigan and Madeleine Beaumont. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press.

Ciocan, Cristian (ed.). 2009. Philosophical concepts and religious metaphors: New perspectives in phenomenology and theology . Bucharest: Zeta Books.

Heidegger, Martin. 1962. Being and time . Trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper & Row.

Horner, Robyn. 2005. Jean-Luc Marion: A Theo-logical introduction . Burlington: Ashgate Publishing Co.

Janicaud, Dominique. 2000. Phenomenology and the “theological turn”: The French debate. Trans. Bernard J. Prusak. New York: Fordham University Press.

Marion, Jean-Luc. 1991. God without being. Trans. Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

Marion, Jean-Luc. 1998. Reduction and givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and phenomenology . Trans. Thomas A. Carlson. Evanston: Northwestern University Press.

47 Cf . Chauvet ( 1995 , pp. 190–227).

873Aperture of Absence: Jean-Luc Marion on the God Who ‘Is Not’

Marion, Jean-Luc. 2001. The idol and distance: Five studies. Trans. Thomas A. Carlson. New York: Fordham University Press.

Marion, Jean-Luc. 2002a. Being given: Toward a phenomenology of givenness . Trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

Marion, Jean-Luc. 2002b. In excess: Studies of saturated phenomena . Trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud. New York: Fordham University Press.

Marion, Jean-Luc. 2002c. Prolegomena to charity . Trans. Stephen E. Lewis. New York: Fordham University Press.

Marion, Jean-Luc. 2008. The visible and the revealed . Trans. Christian M. Gschwandtner, et al. New York: Fordham University Press.

Neville, Robert Cummings. 1968. God the creator: On the transcendence and presence of God . Albany: SUNY Press.

Pascal, Blaise. 1995. Pensées. Trans. A.J. Krailsheimer. London: Penguin Books. Tracy, David. 1981. The analogical imagination: Christian theology and the culture of pluralism .

New York: The Crossroad Publishing Company. Tracy, David. 1987. Plurality and ambiguity: Hermeneutics, religion, hope . Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press.

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Suggested Readings: Negative Theology

1. Caputo, John D., and Michael J. Scanlon (eds.). 1999b. God, the gift, and postmodernism . Bloomington: Indiana University Press.

2. Cooper, David E. 2002. The measure of things: Humanism, humility and mystery . Oxford: Clarendon.

3. Eckhart, Meister . 2009. The complete mystical works of Meister Eckhart . Trans. and ed. Maurice O’C. Walshe. Revised with a Foreword by Bernard McGinn. New York: Crossroad Publishing Company.

4. Egan, Harvey D. 1978. Christian apophatic and Kataphatic mysticisms. Theological Studies 39(3): 399–426.

5. Frank, William. 2007. On what cannot be said . Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press.

6. Hollywood, Amy. 2002. Sensible ecstasy: Mysticism, sexual difference, and the demands of history . Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

7. Hopkins, Jasper (ed.). 2001. Nicolas of Cusa’s complete philosophical and theological trea-tise , vols. 1 and 2. Loveland: Arthur J Banning Press.

8. Kasher, Asa. 1992. Philosophical reinterpretation of scriptures. In Interpretation in religion , ed. S. Biderman and B.A. Scharfstein, 9–37. Leiden: E.J. Brill.

9. Kierkegaard, Søren. 1983. Fear and trembling . Trans. Howard Hong and Edna Hong. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

10. Tzu, Lao. 2006. Tao Te Ching . New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics. 11. Maimonides, Moses. 1963. Guide of the perplexed . Trans. Shlomo Pines. Chicago: University

of Chicago Press. 12. Marion, Jean-Luc. 1995. God without being: Hors-texte . Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. 13. Neville, Robert Cummings. 1992. God the creator: On the transcendence and presence of

God . Albany: State University of New York Press. 14. Plotinus. 1969. Enneads . Trans. S. MacKenna. London: Penguin Books. 15. Dionysius, Pseudo. 1987. The complete works . Mahwah: Paulist Press. 16. Sanders, Andy (ed.). 2007. D.Z. Phillips’ Contemplative philosophy of religion . Aldershot:

Ashgate. 17. Sells, Michael A. 1994. Mystical languages of unsaying . Chicago: University of Chicago

Press. 18. Westphal, Merold. 2001. Overcoming onto-theology . New York: Fordham University Press.