of our God-talk but its how. He offers no reasons to discredit belief in a personal Creator,
Lawgiver, Judge, and Redeemer who is Love Itself. He only points out that when we
allow that God into our discourse only in the service of our project, whatever that project
may be, we transubstantiate God. So far as appearances are concerned, it may seem that
we are speaking about the same God, perhaps the biblical God, but the substance is
totally changed. In this case, however, instead of the second substance having a religious
significance not to be found in the first, it is just the opposite. The second substance, the
“god” of ontotheology, is without religious import. We might call this “god” an idol, for
once we see it for the human construction it is, we are no longer tempted to worship at its
temple.
end p.487
The Return of the Repressed: Negative Theology after Metaphysics
Taking Marion's distinction between phenomenology and metaphysics as a cue, we might
notice (1) that the phenomenologies of Heidegger, Ricoeur, and Marion are not
ontotheological discourses, (2) that they all have a significant relation to matters
religious, but (3) that none is theology. So what about theology after metaphysics? We
might take this “after” historically to mean after modernity, the heyday of metaphysics.
Or we might take it psychologically to mean after theology has seen the blandishments of
ontotheology for what they are and is consciously determined not to be seduced. Our
three phenomenologies seem to point theology in the same general direction. Heidegger's
emphasizes the importance of mystery and the inseparability of concealing from
unconcealment. Ricoeur's emphasizes the shattering of the cogito and the
correspondingly necessary detour through the contingencies of the text that reflection
must take in the search for self-understanding, including self-understanding before God.
Marion's emphasizes the way the sacred appears as always exceeding our cognitive grasp
of it and, beyond being an “object” to which we can never quite catch up conceptually, is
experienced in reversed intentionality as a subject who calls, thereby decentering the
wounded cogito even further. All protest the repression of divine ineffability. A theology
that finds it has its own reasons for taking these themes seriously will be epistemically
modest, not necessarily in the claims it makes about God but in the metaclaims it makes
about those claims. It will remember that just as we do not become purple by talking
about violets, our discourse does not become absolute by being about a God we take to be
absolute. It will know that even with the help of revelation it does not see God face to
face but “in a mirror, dimly” (1 Corinthians 13:12).
In contemporary continental philosophy of religion, a renewed discussion of negative or
apophatic theology is the scene of reflection on these matters (see, e.g., Caputo 1997;
Carlson 1999; Bulhof and ten Kate 2000; Hart 2000; and Kosky 2001). The primary
stimulus has been Jacques Derrida's attempt to distinguish deconstruction from negative
theology and Marion's response.
Derrida says that very early on he was “accusedof negative theology” (1992a, 74;
compare 88–89). His 1968 (1982) response points to two important differences he sees
between the negative, if you like skeptical dimension of deconstruction and negative
theologies. The latter “are always concerned with disengaging a superessentiality beyond
the finite categories of essence and existence, that is, of presence, and always hastening