Three further points of critique can be taken as corollaries to this notion that in
metaphysics God is reduced to being a means to philosophy's end. First, Heidegger
argues that in ontotheology the sense of mystery and awe is lost as the dialectic of
concealment in unconcealment is forgotten (1969, 64–67; compare 1998, 233–37).
Second, ontotheology plays into the hands of modern technology, “the metaphysics of the
atomic age” (1969, 51–52). Presumably, both theology and the faith that is its ground and
goal have as good reasons as philosophy (in the mode of trying to think being) to take
these two critiques seriously. But Heidegger adds a third, this one relating directly to faith
(and thus, indirectly, to theology, but not to philosophy). As we have seen, causa sui “is
the right name for the god of philosophy. Man can neither pray nor sacrifice to this god.
Before the causa sui, man can neither fall to his knees in awe nor can he play music and
dance before this god.” By becoming useful to philosophy, the God of ontotheology has
become religiously useless. Doubtless with Nietzsche in mind, as well as himself, he adds
that to abandon such a god “is thus perhaps closer to the divine God. Here this means
only: god-less thinking is more open to Him than onto-theo-logic would like to admit”
(1969, 72).
Heidegger's critique of ontotheology is often taken to be a critique of theistic discourse as
such. After all, does it not posit a Highest Being who is the key to the meaning of the
whole of being? But the matter is not that simple. To be sure, the affirmation of a
personal Creator, Lawgiver, Judge, and Redeemer who is Love Itself is meant to focus
our attention on a being and not on being as such. So
end p.486
theistic God-talk, whether the first-order discourse of the plain believer or the second-
order discourse of the theologian, is like metaphysics in failing to be philosophy in
Heidegger's sense: it fails to give priority to the question of being. But in spite of his
hankering for hegemony over theology, Heidegger gives us, both early and late,
compelling reasons for theology (and a fortiori first-order God-talk) to resist this
hegemony. Even if we grant that the question of being as such is the philosophical
question, Heidegger gives us no reason why faith and theology should not make God not
only the key to the meaning of the whole of being but also the key to the meaning of
being as such.
The second point is, if anything, more important. If faith and theology, like metaphysics,
focus attention on a Highest Being, they do not do so metaphysically or
ontotheologically. Because they know, at least implicitly, that the wisdom of the world is
foolishness so far as God is concerned, whether it be ontotheologically constituted
metaphysics or the thinking of being that seeks to overcome metaphysics, and because
they want the God of whom they speak to be one before whom we fall to our knees in
awe and to whom we can pray and sacrifice and sing and dance, they repel the seductions
of ontotheology. They recognize that God remains a mystery to human understanding and
resist the temptation to reduce God to a First Explainer in terms of which we can render
both the Highest Being and the whole of being fully intelligible to human understanding.
In other words, overcoming ontotheology does not mean the abandonment of theistic
discourse (Westphal 2001, especially ch. 1). Heidegger's prime targets are not Augustine
and Aquinas but Aristotle and Hegel. The heart of his critique is not directed to the what