by revelation to faith, and (3) centered in “Christ, the crucified God.” It turns out that the
“popular” view, according to which theology has a link to faith and revelation not found
in philosophy as such, is on target after all. Because theology arises from faith and
intends to give rise to faith, and
end p.473
because faith is “not some more or less modified type of knowing” but, as Luther said, is
“permitting ourselves to be seized by the things we do not see,” it follows that theology
“is not speculative knowledge of God.” Precisely because of this relation to revelation
and the faith to which it gives rise, theology is “a fully autonomous ontic science”
(Heidegger 1998, 43–50).
But no sooner has Heidegger said this than he seems to take it back. Even if faith does
not need philosophy, theology as the science of faith does. Not, to be sure, to establish or
disclose its content, but to clarify its conceptual articulation. Husserl had hoped that
phenomenology could be the foundational queen of the sciences, not by dictating their
methods or results but by developing regional ontologies that would clarify the meaning
of their domains. Heidegger still thinks in these terms. The ontic sciences interpret their
distinctive regions under the guidance of an implicit ontology. As the ontological science,
phenomenology's task is both to make the ontological dimension explicit and to subject it
to phenomenological critique by asking whether our (pre)understanding of the being of a
certain kind of beings corresponds to the way they are actually given to us. Theology is
no exception. Its concepts have “as their ontological determinants meanings which are
pre-Christian and which can thus be grasped purely rationally,” in other words, apart
from revelation and faith. This is because “All theological concepts necessarily contain
that understanding of being which is constitutive of human Dasein [Heidegger's name for
the beings we are, meaning being-there], insofar as it exists at all.” Thus, for example, the
theological concept of sin needs to turn to the phenomenological interpretation of guilt,
entirely apart from revelation and faith as a “pre-Christian” and “purely rational”
concept, so the latter can “function as a guide for the theological explication of sin”
(1998, 50–52).
Almost immediately Heidegger replaces this notion of guidance with the stronger notion
of correction and no fewer than nine times describes the relation of theology to
philosophy as one of receiving correction (1998, 52–53). Both in terms of Heidegger's
example and in terms of the general principle involved, this must appear to theology to be
an unfriendly takeover. According to Heidegger's phenomenological/ontological analysis
of guilt as the call of conscience, the call is Dasein's call to itself and it says nothing, has
no specific content (1962, 319–26). It “formally points out the ontological character of
the region of Being to which the concept of sin as a concept of existence must necessarily
adhere” (1998, 52). But how can a concept this formal, devoid of any reference to God
and to any behavioral or attitudinal content, serve to “correct” the theological
understanding of sin? Why must theology necessarily adhere to a conceptuality that is at
once purely formal and pre-Christian?
More generally speaking, does not the claim of philosophy to preside over ideas that are
not merely “pre-Christian” but “purely rational” betray that Heidegger, for all the
postmodern hype surrounding his work, is an unrepentant