One can approach a critique of metaphysics in a number of ways.

These critiques however, generally fall into two related categories, those questioning metaphysics' requirement of real Universals and those questioning its requirement of an explanatory Ground (of being, morality, etc.). Neither means of critique accomplish disproof of the targeted claim of metaphysics, (since disproof of an immaterial formal cause would be impossible) but instead argue against the necessity of the metaphysical explanation. In the case of universals, nonmetaphysic epistemologies and the role of "empirically abstracted concepts" are invoked as a sufficient account of human experience and rationality, as exemplified by Occam, Hobbes, Locke, and much more recently Quine. Ground as required by metaphysics has been argued against through claims that causal relationships remain humanly indeterminable (Hume), that alternative nonmetaphysic explanatory theories suffice as ground (Hegel), or that any reference to a single ground is unnecessary and speculative (Nietzsche). The theological question which should determine any treatment of metaphysics is this. Does metaphysics, whether through universals or ground, make it possible to conceive that through which God is God? This answer to this question does not derive from an evaluation of whether metaphysics is a necessary or obsolete explanatory tool, but on whether it in fact yields what it claims it can. Is metaphysics a reliable tool for the theologian? On this question and in regards to the preceding discussion, Heidegger found it necessary to distinguish between Theology and Theiology [11]. Theology, he suggested, is a matter of faith, whereas theiology is necessarily a philosophical endeavor which ultimately lends itself to atheism through an inability to demonstrate its findings as irrefutable. The task of theiology is to obtain insight into the divine, into Dasein or prime Being, through philosophical reflection and as such seeks explanation and definition. These goals of explanation and definition, however, stand in stark opposition to faith and as such could not possibly belong to Theology. Theology stands in a unique relation to God and thus to Dasein, one whose aim is greater faith rather than definition. It is for this reason that Heidegger defines Dasein in terms of possibility rather than Being as such, for the object of faith must remain unrealized lest faith itself disappear. On this Heidegger writes, Being and God are not identical and I would never attempt to think of the essence of God by means of Being. Some among you perhaps know that I come from theology, that I still guard an old love for it and that I am not without a certain understanding of it. If I were to write a theology - to which I sometimes feel inclined then the word 'Being' would not occur in it. Faith does not need the thought of Being. When faith has recourse to this thought, it is no longer faith. This is what Luther understood. ...One could not be more reserved than I before every attempt to employ Being to think theologically in what way God is God. Of Being, there is nothing here to expect. I believe that Being can never be thought as the ground and essence of God, but that nevertheless the experience of God and of his manifestedness, to the extent that the latter can indeed meet man, flashes in the dimension of Being, which in no way signifies that Being might be regarded as a possible predicate for God. On this point one would have to establish completely new distinctions and delimitations. [12] Of import to our discussion is Heidegger's unwillingness to conceptually equate God with Being nor even linguistically employ the term "Being" in discussions of God. This unwillingness clearly derives from what he sees as a diametrical opposition of philosophical definition to faith. According to Heidegger, somewhere along its history theology misunderstood the unique nature of its task and rather than pursuing the

"interpretation of the divine word of revelation" or the "interpretation of man's being toward God", it adopted theiology's discussions of the Being of "God". Christian theology does not have to do with "God" in this sense, but with the fact of faith in the Crucified, a fact that only faith receives and conceives. [13] This fact alone is the positum of theology, the "science of faith". The possession of such a positum allows Heidegger to deem theology an ontic science with the same standing as chemistry or mathematics, and distinguishes the ontic sciences from the sole ontological science, philosophy, which alone focuses on the analytic of Dasein, Being itself. Theology, however, remains a unique science which centers, not on a realized object, but on its unrealized relation of faith to God. In contrast, theiology or onto-theology pursues discourse on "God" and does not require faith when it formulates its divine names. The more precisely theiology attempts to define the divine names, such as Prime Mover, Efficient Cause, Necessary Being, "God as ultimate foundation" (Leibniz), "God as morality" (Kant, Fichte, Nietzsche), "God as causa sui" (Descartes, Spinoza), the more such names lend themselves to the demise of belief in God. For as soon as theiology proposes a precise concept which is historically verifiable and theoretically explanatory, it follows that the same concept can rightly be subjected to criticism according to similar dimensions. The success of theiology ultimately depends on whether or not its concepts are able to compel their audience to belief in God, a status which very few would be willing to grant metaphysics. Instead, Heidegger insists, "a proof for the existence of God can be constructed by means of the most rigorous formal logic and yet prove nothing since a god who must permit his existence to be proved in the first place is ultimately a very ungodly god. The best such proofs of existence can yield is blasphemy". [14] While retaining Heidegger's critique of theiology and the metaphysic project, Jean Luc Marion claims that the Heidegger's positive thesis regarding theology is inadequate. That Heidegger's theology is an ontic science due to its positum, and possesses a unique relation to Dasein through faith amounts for Marion to "an irreducible ontological dependence" and thus fails to escape the critique aimed at theiology. In addition to the two paths demarcated by Heidegger, namely theology as theiology and theology as faith in Dasein, Marion suggests and pursues a third way, theology without reference to Being. God without Being: the theology of Jean Luc Marion the idol and the icon Throughout the history of humanity's attempt to envisage the divine, the roles of the idol and icon are predominant. The Idol presents itself to man's gaze and purports to be a representation of the divine and thus proposes to offer knowledge pertaining to its otherwise invisible referent. It is the willingness of the gaze to attribute such qualities to the idol rather than any quality of the object itself which accounts for the object's status as idol. For this reason the idolic gaze proceeds no further once the idol is encountered and further pursuit of the divine beyond the idol is stifled. Any discussion of whether the invisible remains invisible or becomes visible belongs to the domain of the idol whose function it is to divide the invisible into that part which is reduced to the visible and another part which is invisible due to the gaze's fixation on the idol. This portion of the invisible is thus invisable. The icon, however, does not result from a vision of the divine, but instead provokes one. Rather than resulting from the gaze aimed at it, the icon summons sight by

allowing the invisible to saturate the visible, but without any attempt or claim of reducing the invisible to the visible icon. The icon attempts to render visible the invisible as such, and thus, strictly speaking, shows nothing. It teaches the gaze to proceed beyond the visible into an infinity whereby something new of the invisible is encountered. Thus the iconic gaze never rests or settles on the icon, but instead rebounds upon the visible into a gaze of the infinite. Concepts readily act as idols and icons according to the intention and gaze with which they are beheld. Marion deems any philosophical thought expressing a concept of what it then names "God" as functioning precisely as an idol. Just as the idol purports to visually capture a small portion of the divine while limiting the gaze to itself, so also theiological names for "God" purport to reveal God yet only at the expense of limiting the horizon of the gazer's ability to grasp God. To subordinate God to Being such that his existence is said to require Being is for Marion to gaze upon Being as an idol through which we claim to see a portion of the invisible true God. Marion chooses instead to follow the formula set forth in Colossians 1:15 wherein Paul proclaims Christ "the icon [eikon] of the invisible God". What is being claimed here, according to Marion, is that although Christ is the [sole] visible icon of God, God remains invisible, not through our misdirected gaze, but through his being invisible as such. God remains unenvisageable. Whereas one's intention and gaze determines the idol, the icon causes contemplation of the intention and gaze of the invisible. Just as Descartes' notion of the "idea of God" entails an idea of the infinite which "if it be true, cannot be grasped at all, since the impossibility of being grasped is contained in the formal definition of the infinite" [15], so also the icon obliges the concept to welcome the distance of infinite depth. This distance must be rightly understood as infinite, and thus completely indeterminable by any concept. And yet, it is not even a question of using a concept to determine an essence of God but of using the iconic concept to contemplate and determine the divine intention - that intention whereby invisible God advances into the visible and inscribes himself therein by the very reference of the visible icon. agape Here Marion has identified what he believes to be that which optimal, non-idolic, nonmetaphysic concepts of God will convey, namely, the divine intention. Rather than seeking theological discourse and hermeneutics within the paradigm of Being and essence, one must approach them with the intent of locating and encountering the intention of God. The only concept Marion finds in Scripture which serves as both name and intention is Love, or as the Apostle John proposes, "God is Agape" (1 John 4:8). Marion views the conceptual content which Agape potentially offers as "unthought enough to free, some day at least, the thought of God from the idolatry of [God as Being]." Agape proves promising in this endeavor for at least two reasons. First, Agape does not suffer from the unthinkable or from an absence of conditions, but rather is reinforced by these absences. Unconditional Love, as we would characterize that of God is love without condition, limit or restriction. It is not fulfilled through being conceptualized, named or comprehended, but rather is fulfilled in giving of itself. In being fulfilled simply in giving of itself, love cannot be thwarted through ignorance or quenched through its refusal. Humanity necessarily responds to this divine Love, since it is given without limit and condition. Humanity has no alternative but to will to receive or refuse such Love. Thus no human intent or gaze can idolatrously dwell on the possibility and impossibility of access to "God", since God as Agape overflows such notions of

access. Unlike the idol, Agape prohibits a limiting or fixing of the gaze of the recipient. For Love does not present itself as an object to be admired and contemplated in and of itself, but rather directs the recipient's gaze to the Giver and Subject of that Love. Love does not pretend to comprehend or embody the invisible but instead gives itself over in order that the intention of the Giver might be encountered by the recipient. scripture and ontological indifference It would be quite right to state that Scripture knows nothing of ontological difference and the question of Being. But it is also manifest that it speaks in terms of being, nonbeing and beingness. In pursuit of reference to a difference which is indifferent to ontological difference, Marion examines Romans 4:17, and 1 Corinthians 1:28. [16] Romans 4:17 "For he is the father of us all, as it is written, 'I have made you the father of many nations' - in the presence of the God in whom you believed, the God who gives life to the dead and who calls the non-beings as beings [kalountos ta me onta hos onta].". Here we are told that the God in whom Abraham believed is He who gives life to the dead and calls the nonbeings as/into being. The question of what Paul here intends with the rather strange notion of "calling nonbeings as beings" is compared by Marion to Aristotle's notion of what would be required for that extreme form of change whereby the nonextant becomes extant. Whereas Aristotle himself doubted that such a transition was in fact possible, Paul here declares it possible in reference to God. It is not the case, of course, that Paul here grasps the form of transition which Aristotle could not, but rather attributes by faith an seeming impossibility to God. Paul's statement also evidences another impossibility, namely, that God calls nonbeings. What could such a call signify to those without being? What does a call to nonbeing "sound" like? This is not a picture of God calling those outside being into His realm of Being, but rather a picture of a God whose call is indifferent to the ontic difference of being and nonbeing. Marion writes, The ontic difference between being and nonbeing admits no appeal; in the world, it acts irrevocably, without appeal. From elsewhere than the world, God himself lodges an appeal. He appeals to his own indifference against the difference between being and nonbeing. He appeals to his own call. And his call sets this indifference into play so that the call not only calls nonbeings to become beings (hos onta here can have this consecutive and/or final meaning), but he calls the nonbeings as if they were beings. The call does not take into consideration the difference between nonbeings and beings. ...The fundamental ontic difference between what is and what is not becomes indifferent - for everything becomes indifferent before the difference that God marks the world. This is an indifference of ontic difference and not, one should note, its destruction. [17] In 1 Corinthians 1:26-29 we read, "For consider your call brethren, namely, that there are not among you many wise according to the flesh, nor many powerful, nor many well born. But God chose the foolish things of the world, God chose them to confound the wise, and the weak things of the world God chose to confound the strong, God chose the ignoble things of the world and the contemptible things, and also the nonbeings, in order to annul the beings [kai ta me onta, hina ta onta katargese] - in order that no flesh should glorify itself before God." We have seen in Romans 4:17 God's indifference to the ontic difference as demonstrated in his call to nonbeings. Here, however, we see not only God's call of nonbeings into being, but also his annulment of beings into nonbeing, thus increasing

our awareness of the indifference with which God views these ontic categories. What is more, Paul seems to here use nonbeings in reference to the brethren, as a description of the sheer lack of dignity with which the world esteems these believers of low birth. This use of the term nonbeing, rather than demonstrating Paul's misunderstanding of what being and nonbeing imply, portrays the confusion with which the "wise" view the world. Paul refers to the brethren as nonbeing, not in a declaration of their nonbeing, but in a declaration of God's ability to confound the "wise's" notion of being and wisdom. Here Paul's statement points to the fact that from the perspective of God, being and nonbeing have more to do with instances of "the call" and "the world" than with philosophical discourse or Being manifesting itself through ontological difference. theological hermeneutics That which theology has to say, that which distinguishes its voice from among the other voices of the world is the fact that Christ alone abolishes the distance between speaker and speech, between sign and referent. For just as Christ speaks the Word of God, he himself is the Word, and thus speaks himself. This is the power and promise of the Christian theology: Christ speaks himself, the Word. Thus any legitimate Christian theology must be conceived as a logos of the Logos, a word of the Word, rather than proposing its own logos about the Logos or allowing its own logos to precede the Logos. "To do theology is not to speak the language of gods or of "God", but to let the Word speak us (or make us speak) in the way that it speaks of and to God. [18] The Word speaks himself to us, and yet we encounter the original kerygma through a great separation of time and documentary distance. The kerygma now stands fixed in the text of the New Testament wherein is recorded the memories and effects of meanings left upon the witnesses of the event. The text itself does not coincide with the event nor permits us to go back to it, but provides, as it were "a negative of the event which alone constitutes the original". This inability to directly access the event through the text speaks to the gap between sign and referent. Thus theology deals with a doubled text, one whose sign and referent are the same, namely the Word, and the other whose sign and referent are irrevocably distant. This latter gap proves difficult for hermeneutics in at least two ways. First, for those engaged in scientific exegesis, wherein the text is read purely on the basis of itself under the assumption that it speaks nothing other than historic meaning, the only event possible will consist in the simple encounter of the text by the reader, rather than an encounter with the Word speaking himself. For Marion, the expectation to master the text scientifically precludes in it all utterance of the Word by the Word. Second, for those who view the text as so radically nonfactual that they expect a future event occurring within the reader himself, it will be discovered that th