Table Of ContentThe Challenge of God
ii
The Challenge of God
Continental Philosophy and the Catholic
Intellectual Tradition
Edited by
Colby Dickinson, Hugh Miller, and Kathleen McNutt
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Contents
Notes on Contributors vi
Preface Colby Dickinson, Hugh Miller, and Kathleen McNutt ix
Introduction: God as Challenge: The Past and Future of Continental
Philosophy of Religion Bruce Ellis Benson 1
1 Is God a Challenge for Philosophy? Adriaan T. Peperzak 23
2 On the Infinite: A Response to Adriaan Peperzak David Tracy 31
3 God and the Ambivalence of Being Jean-Luc Marion, Translated by
Kathleen McNutt 37
4 Being, God, Nihilism, Love: On Marion’s “Ambiguity of Being”
Hugh Miller 55
5 A Phenomenology of Revelation: Contemporary Encounters with Saint
Ignatius Loyola Robyn Horner 69
6 “Consolation without Previous Cause”? Consolation, Controversy, and
Devotional Agency J. Michelle Molina 87
7 Tradition and Event: Radicalizing the Catholic Principle John D. Caputo 99
8 Theological Thinking and John Caputo’s Tradition and Event:
Radicalizing the Catholic Principle John McCarthy 113
9 Epic and the Crucified God Thomas J. J. Altizer 127
10 Scripture, Epic, and Radical Catholicism: A Response to Thomas J. J.
Altizer Adam Kotsko 135
11 Anatheism: A Theopoetic Challenge Richard Kearney 143
12 The God Machine: Techno-Theology and
Theo-Poetics John Panteleimon Manoussakis 161
Index 170
Contributors
Thomas J.J. Altizer was Professor Emeritus of Religious Studies at State University of
New York at Stony Brook. During his long and distinguished career, Altizer published
numerous books working out the implications of a theology of the “Death of God,”
recently including Living the Death of God, The Apocalyptic Trinity, and The Call to
Radical Theology.
Bruce Ellis Benson is Senior Research Fellow at the University of St. Andrews. He
is Executive Director of the Society for Continental Philosophy and Theology. He
taught for over twenty years at Wheaton College. His research interests include the
“theological turn” in phenomenology and work at the intersection of Continental
philosophy and theology as well as hermeneutics and interpretation theory.
John D. Caputo is the Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Humanities Emeritus
at Syracuse University and the David R. Cook Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at
Villanova University. Caputo specializes in Continental philosophy of religion, working
on approaches to religion and theology in the light of contemporary phenomenology,
hermeneutics and deconstruction, and also the presence in Continental philosophy
of radical religious and theological motifs. He is known especially for his notions of
radical hermeneutics and the weakness of God.
Colby Dickinson is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago.
He has published and researches on the relationship of contemporary Continental
thought and systematic theology, focusing on the works of Theodor Adorno, Jacques
Derrida, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Paul Ricoeur. He is the author of
Agamben and Theology, Between the Canon and the Messiah, Words Fail, and Theology
and Contemporary Continental Philosophy.
Robyn Horner is Associate Professor in the Office of the Dean of Theology and
Philosophy at Australian Catholic University. Her work is focused on the contributions
of phenomenology and post-structuralism, especially the work of Levinas, Derrida,
and Marion, to the field of Christian theology and philosophy of religion, particularly
on the topic of r/Revelation.
Richard Kearney holds the Charles B. Seelig Chair in Philosophy at Boston College
and has served as Visiting Professor at University College Dublin, the University
of Paris-Sorbonne, and the Australian Catholic University. He is the author of over
twenty books on European philosophy and literature (including two novels and a
Contributors vii
volume of poetry) and has edited or coedited fifteen others, many on the intersection
of hermeneutics and the problem of God.
Adam Kotsko is on the faculty of the Shimer Great Books School at North Central
College, where he teaches widely in the humanities and social sciences. His research
focuses on political theology, continental philosophy, and the history of Christian
thought. He is the author, most recently, of The Prince of This World and Neoliberalism’s
Demons.
John Panteleimon Manoussakis is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of
the Holy Cross. His research interests include philosophy of religion, phenomenology
(in particular Heidegger and Marion), ancient Greek philosophy (especially Plato and
the Neo-Platonic Tradition), Patristics, and psychoanalysis.
Jean-Luc Marion is the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley
Professor of Catholic Studies and Professor of the Philosophy of Religions and
Theology at the University of Chicago; Dominique Dubarle Chair of Philosophy at
l’Institut Catholique de Paris; Professor Emeritus at the University of Paris-Sorbonne;
and a member of the Académie française. His work is well known in the history of
philosophy and in philosophy of religion, in which he has initiated and written
extensively on the phenomenology of givenness.
John McCarthy is Associate Professor of Theology at Loyola University Chicago.
His teaching and research focus on fundamental theology and hermeneutics, with
research interests in the intersection of philosophy and theology, especially modern
and contemporary, and literary theory.
Kathleen McNutt is a Ph.D. candidate in Theology at Loyola University Chicago.
Her research currently focuses on the relationship between theosis and ecofeminist
theology. She has translated two essays by Jean-Luc Marion, including the one in the
present volume.
Hugh Miller is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. His
areas of specialization are philosophy of religion, philosophical theology, history
of metaphysics, and contemporary French philosophy. Dr. Miller is the author of
several articles and conference papers, and is presently at work on two book-length
manuscripts: the first on the philosophy of Emanuel Levinas and the second on Hegel’s
system.
J. Michelle Molina is the John and Rosemary Croghan Chair and Associate Professor
in Catholic Studies at Northwestern University. She studies the Society of Jesus in the
early modern period. Molina is the author of To Overcome Oneself: The Jesuit Ethic and
the Spirit of Global Expansion, which examines the impact that the Jesuit program of
radical self-reflexivity had on the formation of early modern selves in Europe and New
Spain.
viii Contributors
Adriaan T. Peperzak is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Loyola University
Chicago, where he held the Arthur J. Schmitt Chair from 1991 to 2015. His research
in the history of philosophy has focused on Hegel (six books and numerous articles)
and Levinas (two books and three others edited). He also published on Plato, Aristotle,
Bonaventura, Descartes, Heidegger, and Ricoeur, and on thematic questions in ethics,
social and political philosophy, metaphilosophy, and philosophy of religion.
David Tracy is the Andrew Thomas Greeley and Grace McNichols Greeley
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Catholic Studies and Professor of Theology
and the Philosophy of Religions at the University of Chicago. His many publications
include The Analogical Imagination: Christian Theology and the Culture of Pluralism
and On Naming the Present: Reflections on God, Hermeneutics, and Church.
Preface
Colby Dickinson, Hugh Miller, and Kathleen McNutt
Some of the many recent volumes on the intersection of Continental philosophy
and theology have included an essay or two on the relationship of Catholicism to
Continental philosophy, but none have centered themselves on these two traditions
that have been mingled together for millennia. No volume of essays has yet sought
to address directly this major lacuna in scholarship and bring both Continental
philosophy of religion and the Catholic intellectual heritage into dialogue. From this
point of view, the uniqueness of this volume lies in its direct engagement with many
perspectives within the Catholic intellectual tradition from a variety of philosophical,
theological, spiritual, literary, and artistic dimensions. As the Introduction by Bruce
Ellis Benson will demonstrate, continental thought has a core strongly influenced by
Catholic thought and that connection needs to be teased out in a much more in-depth
way.
It is indeed somewhat surprising that Catholic intellectual traditions have not
been singled out specifically for their influence on Continental philosophical lines
of thought. So many of the French, German, and Italian philosophers commonly
referenced in Continental circles were either raised in or conversant with Catholic
scholarship and traditions, and yet surprisingly little has been written to bring this
context to the forefront of contemporary scholarship. Quite simply, the Catholic
Church permeates Continental thought, especially in the modern period, from René
Descartes and Blaise Pascal to the likes of a Jacques Maritain, an Étienne Gilson, or
a John Henry Newman. Figures as diverse as Edith Stein and Gabriel Marcel played
important roles in establishing phenomenological and existentialist movements, and
many more were formed within a Catholic context, though not formally being a part
of Catholicism or having any desire to join the Catholic Church.
In addition to this obviously Catholic backdrop, the past few decades have seen a
number of significant continental thinkers engage with religious themes in ways both
productive and insightful. Nevertheless, the recognition of just how Catholicism has
shaped continental thought continues to elude scholars. And with fewer philosophers
overtly identifying as Catholic these days, it is often difficult to get a sense of the
influence that Catholicism continues to wield upon philosophical writings and
debates. Despite this trend, however, thinkers as diverse as Charles Taylor, Alasdair
MacIntyre, Jean-Luc Marion, Adriaan Peperzak, John Caputo, Gianni Vattimo, Mario
Perniola, Richard Kearney, and Michel Henry circulate around the Catholic Church
as it informs their respective works in significant ways. In particular, debates within
those parts of contemporary continental philosophy which have been concerned
with what Dominique Janicaud termed the “tournant théologique”—primarily the
