Dante’s theology and contemporary thought: Recovering transcendence?

This article outlines how Dante’s philosophy and theology turn on issues that are being debated in broader philosophical, theological, and theoretical milieus today. It emphasizes, in particular, how the new horizon opened by certain postmodern—and more specifically post-secular—turns in philosophy shifts the light falling on the interface between the concepts of transcendence and immanence. As a result, Dante’s attempt, in the twilight of the Middle Ages, to renegotiate the relations between the two shows up as acutely relevant and potentially groundbreaking for current philosophical and theological inquiry. The areas of inquiry traversed include realized eschatology as theorized by Agamben; Foucault’s archeological model of knowledge; Patristic and medieval hexameral exegesis; the tension between hermeneutics and deconstruction; political theology; the theological turn in phenomenology; secularism and humanities as crypto-theological forms of thought. All are examined as prefigured in embryo by Dante’s comprehensive, poetic approach to knowing.

The World as a Theological Problem

We have no other experience of God but the human experience, claims Emmanuel Falque. We – human beings – are in the world. Whatever we do, whatever we think and whatever we experience happens in the world and is mediated by the manner of the world. This also includes religious experience. Reflection on the possibility of religious experience – the experience of God – suggests that the world is interrupted by someone or something that is not of the world. The Christian worldview makes the tension explicit, which is perhaps why theology neglects the concept and fails in any proper sense to address the world. Through following the phenomenologist Jan Patočka, critiquing the theologian Johann B. Metz and exploring the theological turn in phenomenology, I will face the challenge and argue for a genuine engagement with the world as a theological problem.

Was There a Theological Turn in Phenomenology?

This article examines the possibility that phenomenology was “always already” a theological enterprise, by outlining some of the foundational criticisms levelled by Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. For both thinkers, the phenomenological stress on “lived experience” grants an undue primacy to the realm of “interiority”; as a result, subjectivity is left, not just reified, but also deified. By contrast, both Foucault and Althusser will argue for understanding the subject as constituted rather than constitutive; philosophy’s task, accordingly, is to delineate the broader structures (economic, ideological, discursive, linguistic, etc.) that create “lived experience,” rather than to hypostatize the subject as the privileged bearer of logos. As well as outlining the contours of this critique, however, the article indicates some of the shortcomings entailed in a total disavowal of “lived experience.”

The Myth of the Given?

The theological turn in phenomenology continues to generate cross-disciplinary discussion among philosophers and theologians concerning the scope and boundaries of what counts as a “phenomenon.” This essay suggests that the very idea of the given, a term so important for Husserl, Heidegger, Henry and Marion, can be reassessed from the point of view of Wilifred Sellars’s discussion of the myth of the “immediate” given. Sometimes phenomenology is understood to involve the skill of unveiling immediate data that appear as “phenomena” to a conscious and wakeful ego. In conversation with Jean-Luc Marion’s volume Givenness and Revelation, I challenge the assumption that phenomena are immediate in their givenness. The final remarks concern the “how” of the givenness of theological data, and in particular, the phenomenon of the Trinity.

Phenomenologies of Scripture

This collection of essays by eminent phenomenologists and biblical scholars explores phenomenological approaches to the Bible. The specific goals of this collection are two-fold: first, it advances the recent “theological turn” in phenomenology by turning to scripture. Second, it resolves some of the philosophical and theological difficulties raised by modern biblical interpretation. More generally, the volume re-establishes a rapport between philosophy, theology, and biblical studies. Contributors include Jeffrey Bloechl, Walter Brueggemann, Jean-Louis Chrétien, Kevin Hart, Robyn Horner, Emmanuel Housset, Jean-Yves Lacoste, Jean-Luc Marion, Dale Martin, and Robert Sokolowski.