Christina M. Gschwandtner-ART -A New Apologia- The Relationship Between Theology and Philosophy Int...

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A NEW APOLOGIA:THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN

THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY IN THEWORK OF JEAN-LUC MARION

CHRISTINA M. GSCHWANDTNER

University of Scranton

Apologetics can recover a theological legitimacy, as a style of phenomenologyof the mind laboring at conversion. It therefore progresses toward its goal toreach Love by love only by becoming useless (as regards arguments) little bylittle, for finally love alone, and not discourse, can go to the place whereapologetics claims to lead.

Evidence and Bedazzlement, Prolegomena to Charity

Much of Jean-Luc Marions work hovers on the borderline betweenphilosophy and theology, and he has been most often criticized for hissupposed confusion of these two disciplines. The question of God iscentral to his work and is one that concerns him from beginning to end

of his corpus: whether he is considering the status of God within themetaphysical system of Rene Descartes, whether he is attempting to freeGod from the language of being, to speak of the infinite distance betweenthe divine and the human, to delineate a God of charity or abundant self-giving, or whether he is opening phenomenology to the possibility ofa phenomenon of revelation and describing the saturating givenness ofgrace and forgiveness. He finds it perfectly natural to be moving withoutreticence away from the territory of familiar philosophy in order totraverse phenomenology as well as the most straightforwardly chris-

tological theology.1

In this paper I seek to delineate the relationshipbetween philosophy and theology in Marions work.2 I outline thevarious ways in which he describes their connection and argue that thesedifferent articulations come together in viewing theology consistently asthe superior discipline and in interpreting the task of philosophy as aprimarily apologetic one.

Transgressing the border between philosophy and theology, or eventreating of traditional theological topics within a technical philosophicaldiscourse, does not have to imply, of course, that one has explicitly

thought of the relationship between the two disciplines. At times onehas the impression that such is the case for Marion, since he seems

r The Editor/Blackwell Publishing Ltd, Oxford, UK and Boston, USA.

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particularly adept at offending people from both disciplines. Theologiansand philosophers of religion such as Wayne Hankey, Georges Kalinows-ki, Kenneth Schmitz, and Jean-Yves Lacoste, have repeatedly chided himfor his heavily phenomenological language or condemned him for being

too Heideggerian.3

John Milbank has been especially harsh in some of hiscriticism, claiming that Marion seeks to be both Barth and Heidegger atonce or calling his phenomenological reduction illusory and arbitrary,concluding in a long summary of Marions phenomenology somewhatuncharitably that none of this makes very much sense.4 Philosophers,such as Dominique Janicaud and John Caputo, often react similarly tohis religious terminology, feel like they are being high-jacked by theologyand find phenomenology subverted and misguided by Marionsapparently theological aims.5 Janicaud, for example, complains that in

Marion phenomenological neutrality has been abandoned in atheological veering [which] is too obvious, while Hent de Vries suggeststhat Marion is not so much interested in philosophys freedom withrespect to the theological but is instead motivated by exegeticalpossibilities and theological decisions.6 Theology and philosophy oftenseem to merge into one in Marions work, to the chagrin of almost all ofhis readers.

It would already, then, be interesting to examine these transgressions,to figure out more specifically how philosophy and theology interact and

are married in Marions work and what their precise relationship mightbe. I find even more fascinating, however, what Marion himself actuallysaysabout their relationship, especially as one compares this to what hedoes. My central question in this paper, therefore, is this second one: Howought philosophy and theology relate according to Jean-Luc Marion?How does Marion himself describe their relationship? Yet in explicatingwhat Marion says about the distinction and relationship between thetwo disciplines we will see that these suggestions about how philosophyand theology are to relate actually also delineate well how Marion

himself negotiates the boundary between the two. They are thus notonly a theoretical reflection on the division between the two disciplinesbut do actually inform and describe his practical outworking of theirrelationship.

In his published work, I find three different though complementary explanations about the relationship between philosophy and theology,roughly corresponding to Marions three projects: Cartesian studies,theology, and phenomenology. All three are mentioned on the last pagesof his essay Metaphysics and Phenomenology: A Relief for Theology.

He speaks here of the need to overcome metaphysics and get beyond itsstifling restrictions. Phenomenology is able to accomplish such over-coming of metaphysical language and is therefore eminently helpful fortheology. In the last two pages he explicates what this new situation at theend of metaphysics would mean for the relationship between philosophy

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and theology.7 He insists that the God he has discovered in his analysisof excess and saturation is still the God of the philosophers and scholarsand not the biblical God. The mode of manifestation in phenomenologycomes very close to the idea of revelation in theology, yet there is no

confusion between phenomenology and revealed theology. There is nosuch confusion because, on the one hand, phenomenological analysiscan only think a phenomenon par excellence as a possibility of donationbut makes no judgment about a real experience of this donation whichremains in the domain of theology: Between phenomenology andtheology, the border passes between revelation as possibility andrevelation as historicity. There could be no danger of confusion betweenthese domains. On the other hand, although phenomenology can ap-proach the donation of the face, it cannot and must not understand that

face as a face of charity; when the being-given turns to charity (the lovedor loving being, the lover in the strict sense), phenomenology yields torevealed theology exactly as the second order, according to Pascal, yieldsto the third. Here again, no confusion could creep in. Marion thereforeconcludes that on this path which phenomenology shows beyondmetaphysics the rational thought of God, which philosophy cannotforget without losing its own dignity, or even its mere possibility, finds atleast a certain coherence. Phenomenology opens the way toward arenewed articulation of the thought of God in a coherent and convincing

fashion.Three ways of describing the relationship between philosophy andtheology are thus suggested in the final paragraphs of this article. First,theology and philosophy are related to each other just as Pascals thoughtof charity is to that of Descartes metaphysics. This is a distinctionbetween philosophy and theology as one of second to third order. Second,phenomenology speaks of the possibility of the same phenomenonof which theology proclaims the actuality and historicity. The twodisciplines converge upon each other in the question of God or revelation

by approaching the gap between them from opposite sides. Third, thebedazzling evidence of charity allows for a different kind of evidence, onethat would give the thought of God a certain kind of coherence. It canthus function as a new and different version of apologetics. All threearticulations seek to delineate the boundary between philosophy andtheology in a complementary fashion. Let us thus examine them morecarefully by looking at each individually.

I. SECOND AND THIRD ORDER

Marion makes the first distinction between philosophy and theology earlyin his works on Descartes.8 This distinction is one between Cartesianphilosophy (or specifically metaphysics/ontology) and revealed theology.

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He actually sees in Descartes refusal to engage in theological thinking,and his concomitant refusal to elevate eternal truths to a divine andinfinite status, a confirmation of Descartes commitment to keep the twodisciplines separate and not to think of God with the tools of philosophy.

He carries the distinction further with his use of Blaise Pascal in thiscontext. Pascal, as Marion shows, is a good and faithful Cartesian inhis more geometrical works. Yet, Pascal finds Descartes useless anduncertain in certain other areas, namely more theological ones. Pascalrevives the medieval theory of the three concupiscences: of eyes, mind andheart, and reformulates them as three ways of knowing or seeing. Thefirst order, that of the eyes, examines the natural world and knows itthrough sense experience and exploration. The second order, that ofthe mind, knows the world in a much more technical and strictly

philosophical sense. It employs rigorous method in order to arrive atevidence. It is thus a thoroughly Cartesian metaphysical thinking. Thesecond order in a sense invalidates the first one. It is so much superior toit, that the first seems simple-minded and insufficient in comparison.It devoids it of truth and locates truth (as certainty) in the realm ofphilosophy. Pascal juxtaposes to this a third order, that of the heart orthe will. In this third order, at which one arrives only through a kind ofKierkegaardian leap, one sees the second order with the eyes of faith orcharity. Thus from this (theological) perspective, traditional philosophy

(or metaphysics) seems banal and useless. One no longer knows withones mind, but with ones heart and thus loves. This is the order ofcharity and it renders void or meaningless the second order of philo-sophical discourse.

Each new way of seeing is invisible to the prior order and goes beyondand displaces its manner of perception. Philosophy (or specificallyCartesian metaphysics) is far superior to simple bodily perception andcannot be understood by it. In a heightened fashion, theology or the orderof charity is far superior to metaphysics and cannot be imagined or

understood by its reasoning: Thus, charity provokes the world, seen firstin its two natural orders, to be soaked, tinted, and redrawn in theunthinkable and unexpectedly visible colours of its glory or its abandon.Beneath the bright and iridescent light of charity, the world appearsin all its dimensions, according to all its parameters, with all its con-trasts in short, in truth (MP, 313). The three orders differ in kind andalways remain incommensurable to each other. The superior order(s)remain(s) invisible and incomprehensible to the inferior one(s). The orderof charity displaces and overcomes the order of metaphysics. Theology

can thus here transgress philosophy and render it irrelevant by itssuperiority. Theology gets beyond metaphysics in a way that philosophydoes not and cannot. Theological discourse speaks of the God ofAbraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus, not that of Descartes, Leibniz, Kant,and Heidegger.



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Marion himself has taken such a Pascalian stance in several of hisworks. His relationship to Heidegger in many ways mirrors that of Pascalto Descartes: faithful when it is appropriate and when technicalterminology is necessary, yet intensely critical and iconoclastic in other

places (especially those having to do with God). God without Being, Idoland Distance, and to some extent even Reduction and Givenness areattempts to reach a third order of charity beyond the metaphysicalconstrictions of Descartes, Nietzsche, Ho lderlin, Husserl, and Heidegger.Marion acknowledges as much in his introduction to the Englishtranslation of Being Given where he criticizes this earlier stance asincomplete.9 Yet despite this recent censure, the relationship ofphilosophy and theology as one of second to third order, is one that hementions repeatedly and often presupposes.

For example, in an article presented on the occasion of a conferenceentitled The Question of Christian Philosophy Today at GeorgetownUniversity, held 24 to 26 September 1993, Marion examines thepossibility of Christian philosophy.10 Taking his departure from EtienneGilson, he proposes that Christian philosophy must be more thanhermeneutic, that it must actually serve a heuristic function forcontemporary phenomenology. Gilson had suggested that Christianphilosophy happens whenever revelation works as an auxiliary tool forphilosophy, in that Christian philosophy gives a radically different

interpretation to certain issues than non-Christian philosophy (p. 249).This interpretation of Christian philosophy as essentially hermeneuticalMarion finds unsatisfying for several reasons. First, as a merehermeneutics of concepts or realities also and already explored by strictphilosophy, Christian philosophy becomes secondary, derivative, evenelective in comparison with one instance, philosophy, the only originaland inventive one (p. 252). It would thus not truly be philosophy.Secondly, due to such limitations, Christian philosophy as hermeneuticsbecomes suspect, arbitrary, and relative. One might well choose another

interpretation over the one of Christian revelation. In that case, therewould be no Christian philosophy but only a Christian interpretation ofphilosophy (p. 253). Thirdly, the distinction required by Gilson betweenphilosophy and theology or nature and grace (the known and therevealed) becomes impossible to make hermeneutically, because inter-pretation precisely requires a close correlation between content andinterpretation.

Marion wants to push Gilson in another direction by interpreting theauxiliary function heuristically instead of hermeneutically. If Christs

death and resurrection have truly made all things new, then revelationintroduced realities and phenomena into the world, which never had beenseen or known there before (p. 254). The proper domain of theology ischarity or love. Charity, however, apart from defining the domain oftheology, also has effects on the horizon of rationality (p. 255). Marion

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appeals here explicitly to Pascals third order and turns it into a paradigmfor the relationship between theology and philosophy, where theology isclearly superior to philosophy: Charity, the supreme order, thus remainsinvisible to the flesh and to the spirit, to powers and to sciences (p. 255).

Charity gives new phenomena to knowledge. Revelation is able to offerperfectly rational phenomena to philosophy, although they belong tocharity and are as new as it is (p. 255). These phenomena are introducedby Christian revelation into philosophy and they would be invisible tophilosophy without this revelation. The phenomena of revelationtherefore do not remain relegated to theology but are, in fact, given tophilosophy, to knowledge with a merely natural light. Marion points outthat as a consequence, between theology (supernatural) and philosophy(natural), Christian philosophy would introduce a mix: a knowledge

that would discuss under natural light facts discovered under super-natural light. He admits that all the difficulties of this paradox areconcentrated into one: the mix of natural and supernatural, or ofrevelation and philosophy, does not respect the distinction of the orders.Christian philosophy compromises theology as much as philosophy,because its concept is contradictory (p. 256).11 Christian philosophy, tospeak with the earlier categories, is located in the space between the twoorders, attempts to cross and bridge them and thus hangs suspendeduneasily above the chasm between the two disciplines.

Marion next attempts to mark a careful delineation between the threedisciplines he has distinguished in this article. He defines theology asconcerned with the objects of revelation directly and only through faith,philosophy as dealing with the facts, phenomena and statementsaccessible to reason, and Christian philosophy as that which finds andinvents phenomena and introduces them from the realm of faith into thatof philosophy, from the order of charity into that of reason (p. 261).Philosophy, then, deals with matters of reason, while theology isconcerned with matters of faith or love. Christian philosophy serves as

the messenger between the two and allows for a bridge of the chasmbetween them by making theological phenomena available to philosophy.As in Pascal, for Marion these are more than mere objects but differentmodes of reception. Phenomena discovered and experienced by faith canalso be examined by reason when Christian philosophy bridges the gapbetween them. Marion insists that only by interpreting Christianphilosophy in this way can hermeneutics also become valuable anduseful, when otherwise it would remain simply arbitrary. In its heuristicfunction, charity discovers and introduces new phenomena into the

world itself and the conceptual universe, which are saturated withmeaning and glory, which ordain and eventually save the world. Charitydoes not interpret through and as an ideology, because it gives the worldgreater reality and grandeur than the world pretends to have by itself (p. 261). In this privileging of a charity that speaks from an order



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is assumed. Here Marion seems to interpret philosophy as a kind of toolfor investigating theological phenomena. It is useful as a tool, butcertainly cannot ever transgress its own boundaries and attempt to graspwhat it is examining.

Marion explicates this the most clearly when dealing with the fifthsaturated phenomenon, that of the second degree, which sets forth thephenomenon of revelation.12 In his phenomenological project, he hasoutlined four different saturated phenomena that surpass anythingwe might be able to grasp. Our consciousness is thus overwhelmed bythis excessive intuitive experience. Such saturation of experience mayhappen in four respects: according to quantity, such as the unpredictableand infinitely complex historical event; according to quality, such asthe dazzling brilliance of a painting; according to relation, such as the

absolute intimacy of my own flesh; and according to modality, such asthe utter difference and dignity of the face of another person. Aphenomenon of revelation, however, saturates our horizon not merely inone respect, but in all four of them at the same time: it is thus excessive interms of quantity, quality, relation, and modality at the same time.Marion employs the Christ figure as an illustration of such a revelatoryencounter.

He goes to great pains to distinguish this possibility ofrevelation fromthe actuality ofRevelation, marking the distinction between them even by

capitalizing the one and not the other. He insists that his point is not toinvestigate the status of theology in phenomenology but rather a possiblefigure of phenomenality in which saturation reaches its maximum level(BG, p. 234). His enterprise is directed at liberating possibility inphenomenality and toward freeing it from reductive limits. The paradoxof paradoxa, the saturated phenomenon par excellence, remains a merepossibility. Nothing can be said about its effectivity [effectivite] orits actuality. Phenomenology can never decide whether revelation hasactually taken place, but it can indeed investigate whether revelation

is possible and what figure a phenomenon of revelation might take onwere it to appear. To determine the ontic status of a revelatoryphenomenon is and must always remain only the task of theology.13

It is thus possible, according to Marion, to distinguish clearly betweenrevelation andRevelation. While the one is a mere possibility which maybe examined as a phenomenon by the philosophical exercise, the other is ahistorical fact which has very little to do with phenomenology. Theologyis outside of and exceeds phenomenology. Phenomenology has no claimon it and no right to judge its contents. It functions primarily as a method

of investigating the data given to it and such data might be religiousor theological. Marion concludes this chapter on the phenomenonof revelation by insisting again that his project has been solely anenlargement of phenomenology and that it has nothing whatsoever to dowith justifying the factuality of Revelation. Nor was it even the primary



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goal of his investigation to show the possibility of a phenomenon ofrevelation, but rather to push phenomenology to its limits and carry thedefinitions and resources of phenomenology as far as they will go (BG,pp. 24647). This particular depiction of the relationship between

philosophy and theology is the most clearly performative (instead ofmerely descriptive or prescriptive). It characterizes exactly what Marionseeks to do in his phenomenological work. Much ofBeing Givenand InExcess have precisely as one of their primary aims to establish thepossibility of saturated phenomena, and especially that of the supremelyand paradoxically saturated phenomenon of revelation. Much ofMarions explanation regarding the distinction between possibility andactuality was actually made in defence of his work, especially to the lateDominique Janicaud who was particularly bothered by Marions

importation of God, charity, and similar religious terminology into therealm of phenomenology. Such phenomena, for Janicaud, cannot appear,because they are by definition excluded through phenomenologicalmethod. Marion thus seeks to justify the essentially philosophical andphenomenological nature of his project and refrains from making anyexplicit statements about God or theology and their respective truth orvalidity.14

He does move further in the direction of theology, however, in hismore recent work,In Excess. Not only does he hint at theological themes

at the end of each chapter at times quite explicitly but he also in-cludes a brief section entitled: Concerning a Use of Givenness inTheology. Having clearly established the distinction between phenom-enology and revealed theology inBeing Given, he apparently assumes thatsome guarded statements of theological content are now acceptable andthat his philosophical loyalties are no longer in doubt. He is therefore ableto begin to bring the two disciplines into renewed conversation, whileinsisting that the distinction between the domains, objects, and methodsremains absolute, but . . . the first can shed some light on the second

without destroying it or being destroyed (IE, p. 28). He reiterates moreemphatically that phenomenology is useful for theology, because itsphenomena are experienced and revealed and their phenomenality shouldthus be examined with the categories he has provided. Revelation alwaysassumes a kind of phenomenality, is experienced as a phenomenon. Itshould therefore be investigated with the tools of phenomenology.15

Consequently, Marion advocates a stronger employment of phenomen-ological method and categories in theology. At the same time he suggeststhat it might be fruitful for philosophers to reflect upon the [theological]

meaning of givenness in phenomenology. The two disciplines are thusagain moving closer together in these final remarks. And althoughMarions phenomenological work aims to be decidedly philosophical, atheological concern still seems to hover in the background whichinsinuates that much of this work is finally done in service of the higher

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theological aims. Phenomenology is useful for theology, may become apossible method for its actual content. Fundamental categories inphenomenology (e.g., givenness) in some veiled sense derive fromtheology.

III. A NEW APOLOGIA

Janicauds worries are not without substance, then, especially when oneexamines a third figure that Marion employs for depicting the relation-ship between philosophy and theology. Most prominently in the articleEvidence and Bedazzlement, included inProlegomena to Charity(but ina less explicit fashion also in several other articles), Marion explores the

possibility of a recovery of Christian apologetics that may bridge the gapbetween the second and third orders, between possibility and actuality.He begins by differentiating between what he calls constraining[contraindre] and convincing [convaincre].16 Apologetics should notforce rational acknowledgment of truth [to constrain reason], but ratherprepare the way for a possible decision of the will [convince the will]. Torenounce apologetics completely is to become anti-intellectual andcomfortable and implies complete loss of identity for a Christian. Insteada new kind of apologetics must be recovered:

The aim would no longer be (but has this ever been the goal?) to develop anargumentative machine, which would claim, like well-executed propaganda, toforce an intimate conviction by force of reasons, or rather of popular slogans,an approach that testifies more to a will to dominate and strengthen anapparatus, than to a gesture of love revealing Love. Rather, the aim would bethe external expansion of what shapes, lifts, and incites dogmatics fromthe depths of itself, or rather from the depths of what convokes and institutes it:the tremendous and incompressibledunamiB tou yeouthat exposes its explosionin liturgy, contemplation, and dogmatic theology, in order to be carried onnaturally in apologetics, supposing of course that a perfect, humble, and

poor availability toward the Spirit of God poured out in our hearts is natural(PC, p. 55).

Marion thus seeks to guard against any kind of apologetics that wouldbecome violent and dominating. His goal is to find a balance betweenreason and love. While apologetics is indeed rational in that it removesobjections of reason to faith, it is simultaneously loving in that it revealsGods self-emptying and humble love. This is an apologetics of kenosiswhich parallels the very nature of the Christian faith and God: The

Christian faith would of course have nothing to win by advancing itselfwith such a train of reasons and arguments, because poverty and self-denial befit its fundamental humility (PC, p. 53). The point of thisapologetics cannot be to convince through rational argument, to provesomething beyond the shadow of a doubt. Instead it is an invitation to



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love and is itself rooted in love. It seeks to convince not the mind but thewill. Marion insists that

so long as the will does not freely will to love, apologetics has gained nothing.Consequently, in not recognizing the most decisive factor, an apologetics that

means to be absolutely demonstrative would, by its very success, be condemnedto the most patent failure . . . . Only the will can allow itself to be convinced, andall constraint of reason by reasons remains totally heterogeneous to it, remainson the threshold and decides nothing. Apologetics, in using reasons alone, can,in the best of cases, constrain reason; but even in this event, it will not for allthat convince the will, and will fail in its duty at the precise moment when itbelieves it is fulfilling it (PC, pp. 5758).

Apologetics is thus not ultimately about convincing by rationalargument but about opening a space where the will may make a choice

not against, but other than, reason. Again here philosophy is portrayed asconcerned with reason or the mind and theology with love or the heart.The passage from the one to the other is marked by love. Only the reasonsof the heart, which are those of love or charity, can reach beyond thereasons of the mind. The task of apologetics is to bring us to that point:To make God known to reason, if the will does not want to acknowledgehim, serves no purpose, except to confuse the wills ill will (in the strictsense). Apologetics aims only to lead man to this precise point and thisunavoidable debate: to leave the will sufficiently free of itself (and without

a loophole in the rational discussion) to admit that the love of God, Godas love, is to be loved voluntarily or refused (PC, p. 60). Indeed, onlylove, and the will that loves, is able to reach God. Apologetics thereforetries to bridge the gap between philosophy and theology by removingall obstacles to belief with philosophical rigour. It is in the serviceof theology but uses the methods of philosophy. Its goal ultimately is topoint to the place where the will must make a decision. Marion concludes:Thus, apologetics in no way has as its function the filling of the abyss ofthe voluntary decision for or against Love, by some conceited expansion

of arguments; such a function would be meaningless and contradictory(PC, p. 61). Instead, apologetics culminates at the threshold of Love,which only love can cross with an unbalanced step that singularly startsus off, and which is often experienced as a fall (PC, p. 62).

So the gap between philosophy and theology that apologetics seeks toclose is not one of reason but of commitment. It is not that theology mustbe explained or proven or made rational, but that it requires a decision ofabandonment to its call. Apologetics must therefore ultimately lead toour being bedazzled by the glamour of this overwhelming love. It is not

interested in providing proofs for a theory but in teaching us to love. Wehave come here full circle, as Marion connects this exercise of the will tosubmit to the compelling bedazzlement of love to Pascals move to thethird order of charity (PC, p. 59). Although this article does not speakexplicitly of the distinction between the two disciplines of philosophy and

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theology, it does describe well the function Marion sees philosophyplaying in the discourse of faith. While surely not all philosophy is tobe construed as an apologia for faith in this sense, it seems to me thatMarions philosophy, especially his phenomenology, does indeed func-

tion in this manner.This is particularly obvious in his most recent works In Excessand Lephenome`ne erotique, that although almost entirely philosophical/phe-nomenological, both end on theological notes.17 In Excessdoes so at theend of every chapter, whileLe phenome`ne erotiqueis more or less silent ofGod until the final two pages. In both books, then, the philosophicalreflection finally leads to the very brink of theology. The final pages ofInExcess, for example, wonder: How, without resorting to a meaninglessand even mad paradox, can the excess of giving intuition in the case of

God be considered plausible? (IE, p. 161). Marion has clearly soughtprecisely to make this case as plausibly and as coherently as possible. Heresponds that the excess of intuition in the case of God is experiencedboth in terms of terror at the divine incomprehensibility and as theobsessive questioning that always returns to this topic beyond our grasp.He asks, apparently rhetorically at this point, how could the question ofGod dwell within us too deeply as much in our endeavouring to close itas in our daring to open it if, having no concept that could help us reachit, an intuition did not fascinate us? (IE, p. 162). Our doubts about God

are thus removed as themselves evidence of the divine phenomenon.Furthermore, culminating in his most recent book, Marions threeprojects [Cartesian studies, theology, phenomenology] all point in thedirection of love and seek to open the path toward it. Both his theology inits essentially kenotic character and his phenomenology in its saturatedform intend not only to make possible thought about revelation but tocompel us toward its acceptance in love. He sees it as his own task to givea new account of what it means to be loved, which for him is a farmore fundamental question than that of abstract (Cartesian) certainty.

The question of assurance, of whether somebody loves me, is for him thefundamental question of todays lost society. In following Marion alongthe path of the erotic phenomenon, we recognize in the end God as theonly true lover: In the end, I discover not only that an other loves mebefore I love him, thus that this other plays the lover long before me, butespecially that this first lover, from always, is named God (PE, p. 341). Itis only in these final pages that we realize that everything we have readabout the erotic phenomenon before has led us to this point. Marionthus appears to hope that for the reader all rational obstacles to faithful

abandonment to this loving God have been abolished. In both his mostrecent works, then, he practices what he had described in the earlierarticle as the renewed apologetic task of the Christian philosopher.

Marion articulates three ways of describing the relationship betweentheology and philosophy: as the third order (of charity) superseding the



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second one (of reason), as the theological actuality of which phenom-enology indicates the possibility, and of both as united in the apologetictask of articulating the question of love. All three of them indicatetheology as the superior discipline and see philosophy as either method

for or pathway toward theology. Furthermore, despite all philosophicalcaveats, ultimately they all seem to want to lead us toward Christian faith:to outline possibilities for which faith can provide actualities, to lead us tothe brink of an order of reason that allows for a leap of the will, to giveus a glimpse of the dazzling light of charity that invites us toward itsembrace. In the final pages ofProlegomena to Charity Marion suggeststhat the gift of the Christian theologian to philosophy might be a newarticulation of love:

To know following love, and to know what love itself reveals Pascal called itthe third order. In this context, the theology of charity could become theprivileged pathway for responding to the aporia that, from Descartes toLe vinas, haunts modern philosophy access to the other, the most farawayneighbour. It is doubtful that Christians, if they want seriously to contribute tothe rationality of the world and manifest what has come to them, have anythingbetter to do than to work in this vein (PC, p. 168).

This, of course, precisely defines Marions most recent work on the eroticphenomenon. This is indeed the vein in which Marion has been workingand it is this goal he pursues in his work. Marions own philosophy, then,

is meant to remove all obstacles on the path toward faith and to present itas convincingly as possible. The ultimate concern of Marions project, inother words, is an apologetic one: an invitation to love the God ofabundant and bedazzling self-giving.

Notes

1 Jean-Luc Marion, Prolegomena to Charity, translated by Stephen E. Lewis (New York:

Fordham University Press, 2002), p. xi. Henceforth cited as PC.2 Of course, this is a rather difficult exercise in that theology and philosophy are obviously

defined and delineated differently by different people. We will at the same time have to figure outwhat philosophy and theology mean for Marion. Essentially he makes two clear distinctionsfor each concept: Philosophy can either refer to metaphysics traditional philosophy fromDescartes to Heidegger or to phenomenology contemporary philosophy and indeed the onlykind that Marion finds worth calling philosophy. Theology can also refer to two kinds: tonatural theology one that Marion rejects and that he sees as refuted by Kant, Nietzsche, andHeidegger and revealed theology the speaking about God that does not attempt to limit thedivine but speaks from the way in which God reveals Godself. Theology, in Marion, almostalways refers to this second idea.

3 For example: Wayne J. Hankey, Theoria Versus Poesis: Neoplatonism and Trinitarian

Difference in Aquinas, John Milbank, Jean-Luc Marion and John Zizioulas,Modern Theology15: no. 4 (1999), pp. 387415; Georges Kalinowski, Discours de louange et discourse me ta-physique: Denys lareopagite et Thomas dAquin,Rivista di Filosofia Neo Scolastica 73 (1981),pp. 399404; Jean-Yves Lacoste, Penser a` Dieu en laimant: Philosophie et the ologie de J.-L.Marion,Archives de Philosophie50 (1987), pp. 24570; Kenneth L. Schmitz, The God of Love,Thomist57: no. 3 (1993), pp. 495508.

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takes place, will assume the phenomenal figure of the phenomenon of revelation, of the paradoxof paradoxes, of saturation in the second degree. To be sure, Revelation (as actuality) is neverconfused with revelation (as a possible phenomenon) we scrupulously respect this conceptualdifference by means of its graphic translation. But phenomenology, which owes it tophenomenality to go this far, does not go any farther, and must never decide on the fact ofRevelation, nor on its historicity, nor on its actuality, nor on its meaning. It must not do so, not

only out of concern to distinguish knowledges and to delimit their respective regions, but firstbecause it in no way has the means to do so: the fact (if there is one) of Revelation exceeds thescope of all science, including phenomenology; only a theology, and on condition that it lets itselfbe constructed starting from this fact alone (K. Barth or H. U. von Balthasar, more, no doubt,than R. Bultmann or K. Rahner), could eventually reach it. Even if it had the desire to do so(and, clearly, such was never the case), phenomenology would not have the power to turn totheology. And one must know nothing of theology, of its procedures and its problematics, evensimply to envisage this unlikelihood. (BG, p. 367).

14 As mentioned in the introduction, Dominique Janicaud has repeatedly interpretedMarions work as heavily theological and claims that even Marions phenomenology is a kind ofnegative propaedeutic to his theology. Marion refers repeatedly to Janicauds criticism in thiswork and at times attempts to refute it (more often he simply rejects it). He finds that Janicaud

addresses only what Marion precisely has not said (BG, p. 328). Reduction and Givenness is astrictly philosophical work without a word of theology and explicitly puts the question of Godin brackets (as opposed to Le vinas who, Marion claims, makes far more explicit use oftheological and biblical themes in his philosophical arguments). He objects to Janicauds citinghim out of context and making him say the opposite of what is clear in the text. Marionparticularly strongly rejects the insinuation that he is engaged in a negative phenomenologywhich only prepares the path for a return of theology. He is not introducing a transcendentalGod or metaphysics into the phenomenological project because he is fully committed to theHusserlian reduction of all transcendence to a greater degree even than Husserl himself, since hewants to push this reduction to its furthest and absolute limit (BG, p. 72). Revealed theology notonly has absolutely nothing to do with metaphysics, a point that Janicaud does not recognize,but also cannot and will not enter into phenomenology. Marion finds that Janicauds criticism

overall makes no sense, but is the mere caricature of the theological strawman which he himselfinvents (BG, p. 74).

15 He had already suggested something like this in an earlier article: Aspekte derReligionspha nomenologie: Grund, Horizont und Offenbarung, translated by Rudolf Frank,in Alois Halder, Klaus Kienzler und Joseph Mo ller (eds.), Religionsphilosophie heute: Chancenund Bedeutungen in Philosophie und Theologie(Du sseldorf: Patmos Verlag, 1988), pp. 84103.

16 PC, p. 57. The French refers toProlegome`nes a`la Charite (Edition. De la Diffe rence, 1986,1991), p. 75.

17 Jean-Luc Marion, Le phenome`ne erotique: Six meditations (Paris: Grasset, 2003).Henceforth cited as PE.

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