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God Without Being
Jean-Luc Marion is one of the world’s foremost philosophers of religion as well as one of the leading Catholic thinkers of modern times. In God Without Being, Marion challenges a fundamental premise of traditional philosophy, theology, and metaphysics: that God, before all else, must be. Taking a characteristically postmodern stance and engaging in passionate dialogue with Heidegger, he locates a “God without Being” in the realm of agape, or Christian charity and love. If God is love, Marion contends, then God loves before he actually is.
First translated into English in 1991.
First translated into English in 1991.
343 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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918 people want to read
About the author
Jean-Luc Marion
107 books112 followersJean-Luc Marion is a French philosopher and Catholic theologian whose work bridges phenomenology, modern philosophy, and theology. A former student of Jacques Derrida, he studied at the University of Nanterre, the Sorbonne, and the École normale supérieure under Derrida, Louis Althusser, and Gilles Deleuze, while privately exploring theology with figures such as Louis Bouyer, Jean Daniélou, Henri de Lubac, and Hans Urs von Balthasar. His early academic career included assistant lectureships at the Sorbonne and a doctorate completed in 1980, after which he taught at the University of Poitiers and later directed philosophy programs at the University Paris X – Nanterre and the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). Marion has also held visiting and endowed professorships at the University of Chicago Divinity School, where he served as John Nuveen Professor and later as Andrew Thomas and Grace McNichols Greeley Professor of Catholic Studies, retiring in 2022. Elected to the Académie Française in 2008, he delivered the 2014 Gifford Lectures at the University of Glasgow and has received numerous honors including the Premio Joseph Ratzinger, the Karl Jaspers Prize, and the Grand Prix de philosophie de l’Académie française. Marion’s philosophical contributions focus on the concept of givenness, radicalizing phenomenology to explore the “saturated phenomenon,” which exceeds the capacities of cognition, and examining love through intentionality, inspired by Emmanuel Levinas. His major works include God Without Being, Réduction et donation, Étant donné, and Du surcroît, addressing idolatry, love, the gift, and the limits of perception. Marion’s thought has deeply influenced contemporary debates in philosophy of religion, phenomenology, and theology, emphasizing how phenomena show themselves prior to consciousness, how love implicates the invisible other, and how the gift and givenness constitute the foundational conditions for understanding being, knowledge, and relationality.
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April 8, 2019
Marion is Levinas without the latter's hyperbole that borders on, as Ricoeur puts it, "paroxysm" (Oneself as Another 338). They both pledge fidelity to phenomenology in order to think beyond being (Levinas) or to cross being (Marion): "The crossing of Being: up to this point, we only glimpse God who may accomplish it" (108; the word 'God' is crossed out throughout this book). They both think via phenomenology what phenomenology is incapable of showing: ethics for Levinas and that which revelation reveals for Marion. If Levinas describes ethics beyond phenomenology by "an abuse of language" (Otherwise than Being or Beyond Essence (OB) 156) to accomplish "the subversion of essence into substitution" (OB 162; "essence" in OB always means "Being" or Sein); Marion describes phenomenologically the invisible that crosses the visible, or love that transcends the world of beings; and he does so with the Husserlian patience and rigor without hyperbole or abuse of language. Levinas strikes the reader with, as Derrida aptly put it in 1967 (without the benefit of reading OB, which was yet to be published in 1974), "the infinite insistence of waves on a beach: return and repetition, always, of the same wave against the same shore, in which, however, as each return recapitulates itself, it also infinitely renews and enriches itself" ("Violence and Metaphysics," Writing and Difference 312, fn. 7). In contrast, Marion is methodic with the infinite patience and attention to detail. Metaphors are abundant in Levinas; in Marion they are rare but, when used, are effective. These are two different styles of writings with the similar objectives: to describe and to analyze that which lies beyond phenomenology. Even though Marion rejects Levinas's moralistic reduction--justifiably or not--he relies heavily on Levinas's ground breaking work that pioneered the movement of transgression beyond Husserl's egology and Heidegger's ontology. Can philosophy think beyond being or otherwise than being? It turns out that a lot falls beyond philosophy such as the Other, ethics, face, revelation, God, soul, the kingdom of God, icon, good, evil, forgiveness, redemption, creation, love, etc. If Heidegger's Being and Time constitutes a fundamental ontology, it omits awful a lot: almost all items in the list just provided. Is phenomenology possible regarding those just listed? Is phenomenology capable of addressing "divine things" as well as "human things," to use Pascal's distinction? If "divine things" falls outside of philosophy, is 'not to philosophize' still to philosophize? We know Levinas's answer to that question, which was attributed to Aristotle and which Derrida poses to Levinas ("Violence and Metaphysics"): "Not to philosophize would not be 'to philosophize still,' nor to succumb to opinions"("God and Philosophy," Emmanuel Levinas: Basic Philosophical Writings 148, 129). We can do better than philosophy, while still speaking the language of philosophy. We can speak Greek in order to think what the Greeks themselves could not think, as Levinas was known to have said to Marion once. It is true that both Levinas and Marion made the "theological turn," as Dominique Janicaud aptly put it (see Phenomenology and the Theological Turn), but, contrary to Janicaud's assessment, they both did not abandon philosophy or phenomenology. If the term "post modernism" means anything, it must refer to thinking beyond being or thinking by way of crossing being. Thus, metaphysics is finally overcome by the metaphysics of transcendence (Levinas) or by philosophic theology (Marion). One can move beyond Heidegger, who first explicitly broached the task of overcoming metaphysics, while persistently maintaining the strict separation between phenomenology and theology (see his 1927 lecture entitled the same in Pathmarks).
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August 4, 2011Review of God Without Being: Hors-Text
Jean-Luc Marion’s text is a destruction and deconstruction of philosophical idols. His thesis is fairly simple but profound: discourse on “being,” that God before all else has to be (2). This is not yet the problem, however. As metaphysics developed, God become confused with being. Eventually, theologians and philosophers found that God was conceivable to the degree that metaphysics understood him. In short, metaphysics limited God (34). How then does one speak of God? Does suggesting that God is without being mean that God doesn’t exist? No, for Marion suggests that before God “is,” he gives. He comes to us in the Eucharist.
Marion rightly notes that philosophical talk about God is often idolatrous. Metaphysics created God after its own image. This leads into Marion’s discussion of the “idol and the icon.” (The next 150 pages are remarkably dense.) Marion starts off well but it is hard to see how he doesn’t beg the question and also what he is actually trying to say. I like his discussion on “the icon.” At surface level it is a good meditation on Christian aesthetics. But one gets the impression that Marion is not using “icon” in the sense that the Orthodox use it. Marion says the idol’s gaze is wrong because it freezes on the watcher, but the icon is actually looking at him who is looking at me. The icon’s gaze pierces reality. Okay, I agree but how is this statement not begging the question? Marion never made it clear how the icon’s gaze doesn’t deconstruct back to the idol’s gaze.
Marion later moves into a moving discussion on Christian hermeneutics. More so than most theologians, Marion is keen to the challenges that Derrida and Nietzsche pose to Christianity—and to the opportunities available. The problem is the “gap” between text and reality. One can read of the Easter “event,” but one is only reading of it. One is still removed from the event. A Christ-hermeneutics, however, bridges the gap between text and reality in the Eucharist (150). A fascinating discussion with much passion and promise, but one wishes that Marion would have spent more time on this.
Conclusion
This book started off well with references to Gilson’s work on “Being” as well as other moves in Thomism. And the thesis is sound and simple enough. But even those readers who are well-read in philosophy will wonder what Marion is trying to say. This book could have easily been 80 pages long and the reader would not be at a loss. Marion spent too little time on the clear parts and too much time on the dense parts (without making them clearer).
Jean-Luc Marion’s text is a destruction and deconstruction of philosophical idols. His thesis is fairly simple but profound: discourse on “being,” that God before all else has to be (2). This is not yet the problem, however. As metaphysics developed, God become confused with being. Eventually, theologians and philosophers found that God was conceivable to the degree that metaphysics understood him. In short, metaphysics limited God (34). How then does one speak of God? Does suggesting that God is without being mean that God doesn’t exist? No, for Marion suggests that before God “is,” he gives. He comes to us in the Eucharist.
Marion rightly notes that philosophical talk about God is often idolatrous. Metaphysics created God after its own image. This leads into Marion’s discussion of the “idol and the icon.” (The next 150 pages are remarkably dense.) Marion starts off well but it is hard to see how he doesn’t beg the question and also what he is actually trying to say. I like his discussion on “the icon.” At surface level it is a good meditation on Christian aesthetics. But one gets the impression that Marion is not using “icon” in the sense that the Orthodox use it. Marion says the idol’s gaze is wrong because it freezes on the watcher, but the icon is actually looking at him who is looking at me. The icon’s gaze pierces reality. Okay, I agree but how is this statement not begging the question? Marion never made it clear how the icon’s gaze doesn’t deconstruct back to the idol’s gaze.
Marion later moves into a moving discussion on Christian hermeneutics. More so than most theologians, Marion is keen to the challenges that Derrida and Nietzsche pose to Christianity—and to the opportunities available. The problem is the “gap” between text and reality. One can read of the Easter “event,” but one is only reading of it. One is still removed from the event. A Christ-hermeneutics, however, bridges the gap between text and reality in the Eucharist (150). A fascinating discussion with much passion and promise, but one wishes that Marion would have spent more time on this.
Conclusion
This book started off well with references to Gilson’s work on “Being” as well as other moves in Thomism. And the thesis is sound and simple enough. But even those readers who are well-read in philosophy will wonder what Marion is trying to say. This book could have easily been 80 pages long and the reader would not be at a loss. Marion spent too little time on the clear parts and too much time on the dense parts (without making them clearer).
June 9, 2008
The distinction between Idol/Icon is massively helpful in giving new light to understanding Christianity. His lay-out of sacramental theology is innovative and helpful for the Church catholic.
July 3, 2024
Foreword
Classic modern theological strategy is to correlate claims of reason and disclosures of revelation
Alternatively, one can claim that reason functions in theology by developing concepts and categories to clarify theology’s sole foundation in revelation. Marion is here, revelation-based
For Marion, reason, although crucial for developing rigorous philosophical-theological concepts for understanding the “gift,” even “excess,” of God’s self-disclosure as “agape,” is, on its own, not an icon but an “idol.”
Reason is capable of thinking Being. But reason is not capable of iconically disclosing God, except within the confines of Being,
For Marion, true theology, focused iconically on God’s excessive self-revelation as Love, needs to abandon all the metaphysics of the subject which have defined modernity. Also needs to abandon the onto-theological horizon which may confine even Aquinas to understanding God in terms of “Being”***
We need new thought-ful concepts (gift, excess, face, icon_ to understand with conceptual rigor the reality of God’s self-disclosure as Love.
True theology therefore needs God without Being. Cease being theo-logy and become again theo-logy
This is a revelation-centered, noncorrelational, postmetaphysical theology. Marion has developed a rigorous and coherent theological strategy focused on the reality of God's revelation as pure gift, indeed as excess.
Non-revelation insistent theologies are idols
We’re deeply Catholic here
1991 Preface
Milieu of nihilism and crises. A stake: the obscuring of God in the indistinct haze of the "human sciences," which at the time were elevated by "structuralism" to the rank of dominant doctrine.
was it insinuating that the God "without being" is not, or does not exist? Let me repeat now the answer I gave then: no, definitely not. God is, exists, and that is the least of things.
At issue here is not the possibility of God’s attaining Being, but, quite the opposite, the possibility of Being’s attaining to God.
Does Being define the first and the highest of the divine names? When God offers himself to be contemplated and gives himself to be prayed to, is he concerned primarily with Being?
To be or not to be-that is in- deed the first and indispensable question for everything and everyone, and for man in particular. But with respect to Being, does God have to behave like Hamlet?
Metaphysics has imposed titles of God. When Nietzzsche spoke of God’s death, then, he wasn’t far off: these names reflect purely metaphysical functions of "God" and hide that much more the mystery of God as such. Nietzsche not only proclaimed the "death of God," he brought the grounds for it to light: under the conceptual names of "God" only metaphysical "idols" emerge, imposed on a God who is still to be encountered.
the "death of God" exclusively concerns the failure of the metaphysical concepts of "God"
This isn’t anti-Thomist (anti-Catholic) bc even when Thomas thinks God as esse, he does not chain either
He does not chain God to Being because the divine esse im- measurably surpasses (and hardly maintains an analogia with) the ens commune of creatures, which are characterized by the real distinction between esse and their essence, whereas God, and He alone, absolutely merges essence with esse: God is ex- pressed as esse, but this esse is expressed only of God, not of the beings of metaphysics. In this sense, Being does not erect an idol before God, but saves his distance.
The question returned to: can the conceptual thought of God (conceptual, or rational, and not intuitive or "mystical" in the vulgar sense) be developed outside of the doctrine of Being (in the metaphysical sense, or even in the nonmetaphysical sense)? Does God give himself to be known according to the horizon of Being or according to a more radical horizon? God Without Being barely sketches an answer, but does sketch it: God gives Himself to be known insofar as He gives Himself- according to the horizon of the gift itself.
THE GIFT: constitutes at once the mode and the body of his revelation. In the end the gift gives only itself, but in this way it gives absolutely everything.
Approached negatively, and then dogmatically (Eucharist and confession of faith are emblematic. Eucharist especially is hors-texte, less an addition than a deliverance)
1. The Idol and the Icon
Icon and Idol as two distinct, competing concepts belonging to historical moments in antagonism
Eidōlon (presupposes the Greek splendor of the visible, whose polychromy gives rise to the polysemy of the divine)
Eikōn (renewed from HB by NT, concentrates on the sole figure of the Only One)
Conflict unfolds in a dimension far more essential than pagan vs Christian art polemic
Icon and idol indicate a manner of being for beings–cannot be beings against other beings bc some beings can pass from one rank to the other
The movement happens based on veneration, and only some beings can be venerated. It is a question of signa concerning the design
Signa rests on visibility
In outlining the comparative phenomenology of the idol and the icon, it is therefore a question of specifying not any particular matter of aesthetics or art history, but two modes of apprehension of the divine visibility. Of apprehension, or also, no doubt, of reception
First Visible
Idols cannot but be seen. Seeing it suffices to know it. Representation and knowledge can seize hold of it. The idol fascinates and captivates the gaze precisely bc everything in it must expose itself to the gaze. The domain of the idol is the domain of the gaze. It captivates the gaze only inasmuch as the gazeable comprises it.
How are there multiplicity of idols, then, if it is all-gaze? The gaze makes the idol, not the idol the gaze–which means that the idol with its visibility fills the intention of the gaze, which wants nothing other than to see. The gaze precedes the idol.
This first visible will offer, for each gaze and in the measure of its scope, its idol. Idol-or the gaze's landing place. What, then, does the idol indicate?
Invisible mirror
The idol stops the gaze, intervenes the gaze’s consuming of the visible. What shows up? For the first (and last) time, the gaze no longer rushes through the spectacle stage without stopping, but forms a stage in the spectacle; it is fixed in it and, far from passing beyond, remains facing what becomes for it a spectacle to re-spect. The gaze lets itself be filled.
The idol offers to, or rather imposes on, the gaze, its first visible-whatever it may be, thing, man, woman, idea, or god. But consequently, if in the idol the gaze sees its first visible, it discovers in it, more than just any spectacle, its own limit and proper place.
The idol thus acts as a mirror, not as a portrait: a mirror that reflects the gazes image, or more exactly, the image of its aim and of the scope of that aim. The idol, as invisible mirror, gives the gaze its stopping point and measures out its scope.
With the idol, the invisible mirror admits no beyond, because the gaze cannot raise the sight of its aim. The invisible mirror thus marks, negatively, the shortcoming of the aim-literally, the invisable
Dazzling Return
Thus the idol consigns the divine to the measure of a human gaze. Invisible mirror, mark of the invisable, it must be apprehended following its function and evaluated according to the scope of that function. Only then does it become legitimate to ask what the material figure given to the idol by human art rep- resents, what it resembles.
The answer is that it represents nothing, but presents a certain low-water mark of the divine.
Consigned to the material is what a gaze–that of the artist as religious man, penetrated by god–has seen of the god.
the first visible was able to dazzle his gaze, and this is what the artist tries to bring out in his material: he wants to fix in stone, strictly to solidify, an ultimate visible, worthy of the point where his gaze froze.
The idol serves as a materially fixed relay between different brilliancies produced by the same first visible; it becomes the concrete history of the god and the memory of it that men do or do not keep. For this very reason, no one, not even a modern of the age of distress, remains sheltered from an idol
Because the idol allows the divine to occur only in man's measure, man can consign the idolatrous experience to art and thus keep it accessible, if not to all and at all times, at least to the worshipers of the god, and as long as the gods have not fled.
Conceptual Idol
Idols dont need to be aesthetic–can be conceptual. Like, oh I dont know…the names of God…
Conceptual idols of metaphysics
Icon of the Invisible
The ICON does not result from a vision but provokes one. The icon is not seen, but appears, or more originally seems, looks like
The invisible remains invisible
The icons shows nothing
The icon summons the gaze to surpass itself by never freezing on a visible, since the visible only presents itself here in view of the invisible.
It does make something visible, but this is not the invisible. The gaze must reboin order to go back in it up the infinite stream of the invisible. In this sense, the icon makes visible only by giving rise to an infinite gaze. Idk.
The Face Envisages
The icon lays out the material of wood and paint in such a way that there appears in them the intention of a transpiercing gaze emanating from them.
The icon regards us-it concerns us, in that it allows the intention of the invisible to occur visibly.
IDOLS MAKE VISIBLE, ICON LETS VISIBLE HAPPEN? Lets the tide of the invisible come in, slack on immense visible shores.
Visible Mirror of the Invisible
In the idol, the gaze of man is frozen in its mirror; in the icon, the gaze of man is lost in the invisible gaze that visibly envisages him.
in the idol, the reflex of the mirror distinguishes the visible from that which exceeds the aim, the in- visible because invisable; in the icon, the visible is deepened infinitely in order to accompany, as one may say, each point of the invisible by a point of light.
Classic modern theological strategy is to correlate claims of reason and disclosures of revelation
Alternatively, one can claim that reason functions in theology by developing concepts and categories to clarify theology’s sole foundation in revelation. Marion is here, revelation-based
For Marion, reason, although crucial for developing rigorous philosophical-theological concepts for understanding the “gift,” even “excess,” of God’s self-disclosure as “agape,” is, on its own, not an icon but an “idol.”
Reason is capable of thinking Being. But reason is not capable of iconically disclosing God, except within the confines of Being,
For Marion, true theology, focused iconically on God’s excessive self-revelation as Love, needs to abandon all the metaphysics of the subject which have defined modernity. Also needs to abandon the onto-theological horizon which may confine even Aquinas to understanding God in terms of “Being”***
We need new thought-ful concepts (gift, excess, face, icon_ to understand with conceptual rigor the reality of God’s self-disclosure as Love.
True theology therefore needs God without Being. Cease being theo-logy and become again theo-logy
This is a revelation-centered, noncorrelational, postmetaphysical theology. Marion has developed a rigorous and coherent theological strategy focused on the reality of God's revelation as pure gift, indeed as excess.
Non-revelation insistent theologies are idols
We’re deeply Catholic here
1991 Preface
Milieu of nihilism and crises. A stake: the obscuring of God in the indistinct haze of the "human sciences," which at the time were elevated by "structuralism" to the rank of dominant doctrine.
was it insinuating that the God "without being" is not, or does not exist? Let me repeat now the answer I gave then: no, definitely not. God is, exists, and that is the least of things.
At issue here is not the possibility of God’s attaining Being, but, quite the opposite, the possibility of Being’s attaining to God.
Does Being define the first and the highest of the divine names? When God offers himself to be contemplated and gives himself to be prayed to, is he concerned primarily with Being?
To be or not to be-that is in- deed the first and indispensable question for everything and everyone, and for man in particular. But with respect to Being, does God have to behave like Hamlet?
Metaphysics has imposed titles of God. When Nietzzsche spoke of God’s death, then, he wasn’t far off: these names reflect purely metaphysical functions of "God" and hide that much more the mystery of God as such. Nietzsche not only proclaimed the "death of God," he brought the grounds for it to light: under the conceptual names of "God" only metaphysical "idols" emerge, imposed on a God who is still to be encountered.
the "death of God" exclusively concerns the failure of the metaphysical concepts of "God"
This isn’t anti-Thomist (anti-Catholic) bc even when Thomas thinks God as esse, he does not chain either
He does not chain God to Being because the divine esse im- measurably surpasses (and hardly maintains an analogia with) the ens commune of creatures, which are characterized by the real distinction between esse and their essence, whereas God, and He alone, absolutely merges essence with esse: God is ex- pressed as esse, but this esse is expressed only of God, not of the beings of metaphysics. In this sense, Being does not erect an idol before God, but saves his distance.
The question returned to: can the conceptual thought of God (conceptual, or rational, and not intuitive or "mystical" in the vulgar sense) be developed outside of the doctrine of Being (in the metaphysical sense, or even in the nonmetaphysical sense)? Does God give himself to be known according to the horizon of Being or according to a more radical horizon? God Without Being barely sketches an answer, but does sketch it: God gives Himself to be known insofar as He gives Himself- according to the horizon of the gift itself.
THE GIFT: constitutes at once the mode and the body of his revelation. In the end the gift gives only itself, but in this way it gives absolutely everything.
Approached negatively, and then dogmatically (Eucharist and confession of faith are emblematic. Eucharist especially is hors-texte, less an addition than a deliverance)
1. The Idol and the Icon
Icon and Idol as two distinct, competing concepts belonging to historical moments in antagonism
Eidōlon (presupposes the Greek splendor of the visible, whose polychromy gives rise to the polysemy of the divine)
Eikōn (renewed from HB by NT, concentrates on the sole figure of the Only One)
Conflict unfolds in a dimension far more essential than pagan vs Christian art polemic
Icon and idol indicate a manner of being for beings–cannot be beings against other beings bc some beings can pass from one rank to the other
The movement happens based on veneration, and only some beings can be venerated. It is a question of signa concerning the design
Signa rests on visibility
In outlining the comparative phenomenology of the idol and the icon, it is therefore a question of specifying not any particular matter of aesthetics or art history, but two modes of apprehension of the divine visibility. Of apprehension, or also, no doubt, of reception
First Visible
Idols cannot but be seen. Seeing it suffices to know it. Representation and knowledge can seize hold of it. The idol fascinates and captivates the gaze precisely bc everything in it must expose itself to the gaze. The domain of the idol is the domain of the gaze. It captivates the gaze only inasmuch as the gazeable comprises it.
How are there multiplicity of idols, then, if it is all-gaze? The gaze makes the idol, not the idol the gaze–which means that the idol with its visibility fills the intention of the gaze, which wants nothing other than to see. The gaze precedes the idol.
This first visible will offer, for each gaze and in the measure of its scope, its idol. Idol-or the gaze's landing place. What, then, does the idol indicate?
Invisible mirror
The idol stops the gaze, intervenes the gaze’s consuming of the visible. What shows up? For the first (and last) time, the gaze no longer rushes through the spectacle stage without stopping, but forms a stage in the spectacle; it is fixed in it and, far from passing beyond, remains facing what becomes for it a spectacle to re-spect. The gaze lets itself be filled.
The idol offers to, or rather imposes on, the gaze, its first visible-whatever it may be, thing, man, woman, idea, or god. But consequently, if in the idol the gaze sees its first visible, it discovers in it, more than just any spectacle, its own limit and proper place.
The idol thus acts as a mirror, not as a portrait: a mirror that reflects the gazes image, or more exactly, the image of its aim and of the scope of that aim. The idol, as invisible mirror, gives the gaze its stopping point and measures out its scope.
With the idol, the invisible mirror admits no beyond, because the gaze cannot raise the sight of its aim. The invisible mirror thus marks, negatively, the shortcoming of the aim-literally, the invisable
Dazzling Return
Thus the idol consigns the divine to the measure of a human gaze. Invisible mirror, mark of the invisable, it must be apprehended following its function and evaluated according to the scope of that function. Only then does it become legitimate to ask what the material figure given to the idol by human art rep- resents, what it resembles.
The answer is that it represents nothing, but presents a certain low-water mark of the divine.
Consigned to the material is what a gaze–that of the artist as religious man, penetrated by god–has seen of the god.
the first visible was able to dazzle his gaze, and this is what the artist tries to bring out in his material: he wants to fix in stone, strictly to solidify, an ultimate visible, worthy of the point where his gaze froze.
The idol serves as a materially fixed relay between different brilliancies produced by the same first visible; it becomes the concrete history of the god and the memory of it that men do or do not keep. For this very reason, no one, not even a modern of the age of distress, remains sheltered from an idol
Because the idol allows the divine to occur only in man's measure, man can consign the idolatrous experience to art and thus keep it accessible, if not to all and at all times, at least to the worshipers of the god, and as long as the gods have not fled.
Conceptual Idol
Idols dont need to be aesthetic–can be conceptual. Like, oh I dont know…the names of God…
Conceptual idols of metaphysics
Icon of the Invisible
The ICON does not result from a vision but provokes one. The icon is not seen, but appears, or more originally seems, looks like
The invisible remains invisible
The icons shows nothing
The icon summons the gaze to surpass itself by never freezing on a visible, since the visible only presents itself here in view of the invisible.
It does make something visible, but this is not the invisible. The gaze must reboin order to go back in it up the infinite stream of the invisible. In this sense, the icon makes visible only by giving rise to an infinite gaze. Idk.
The Face Envisages
The icon lays out the material of wood and paint in such a way that there appears in them the intention of a transpiercing gaze emanating from them.
The icon regards us-it concerns us, in that it allows the intention of the invisible to occur visibly.
IDOLS MAKE VISIBLE, ICON LETS VISIBLE HAPPEN? Lets the tide of the invisible come in, slack on immense visible shores.
Visible Mirror of the Invisible
In the idol, the gaze of man is frozen in its mirror; in the icon, the gaze of man is lost in the invisible gaze that visibly envisages him.
in the idol, the reflex of the mirror distinguishes the visible from that which exceeds the aim, the in- visible because invisable; in the icon, the visible is deepened infinitely in order to accompany, as one may say, each point of the invisible by a point of light.
September 27, 2025
I first encountered Marion’s philosophy of the idol in my 2020 postmodern philosophy class (PHIL 285J) in the section on Jean Baudrillard’s Simulation and Simulacra. I absolutely adored Jean’s book, in fact it became foundational to my worldview from then on (along with Jean-Francois Lyotard’s The Postmodern Condition). Honestly taking that class amid my early deconstruction was perfect timing. I asked for this book for Christmas because of that class and it sat on my shelves for 5 years.
As I read this book, I had the same experience as when I read Derrida — feeling like I was standing in front of a chasm of knowledge that i simultaneously knew was super important but couldn’t understand. I slowly worked through this book, and I have just come away thinking I need to read it again, but also that I actually have to read Heidegger to do that.
The stuff on idols vs images and Eucharist as hermeneutics I could follow. That’s maybe 15% of the book. One day I will return. Also I have no idea why David Bentley Hart has beef with this guy and postmodern theology.
As I read this book, I had the same experience as when I read Derrida — feeling like I was standing in front of a chasm of knowledge that i simultaneously knew was super important but couldn’t understand. I slowly worked through this book, and I have just come away thinking I need to read it again, but also that I actually have to read Heidegger to do that.
The stuff on idols vs images and Eucharist as hermeneutics I could follow. That’s maybe 15% of the book. One day I will return. Also I have no idea why David Bentley Hart has beef with this guy and postmodern theology.
September 17, 2007
Though he has since retracted some aspects of his critique of St. Thomas, this remains an essential work in the realm of anti-Kantian phenomenology, and includes some intriguing (NT) exegetical work. The section on the "idolic/iconic gaze" and "saturated phenomena" has indelibly effected my thinking on a variety of issues. Also seminal for the post-metaphysical theologians is the section on "conceptual atheism": a genealogy of atheism that finds its genesis in the idea of god.
August 26, 2012
Por la vía fenomenológica, se le encuentra a Dios justo ahí, en la distancia y despojado de todo lo que se creía que era. De la iconoclastia conceptual a la idolatria religiosa y la muerte de Dios.
March 29, 2026
A very dense and often difficult book to access. But if you’re willing to work through it (or if you’re just very smart), there’s a theology here that’s genuinely worth exploring.
The premise reminded me of a line from Søren Kierkegaard: “God does not exist—He is eternal.” The idea is that God cannot “exist” in the same way things within time do, because that would make Him contingent—something with a beginning, subject to cause and effect. Instead, God would have to be outside those categories altogether.
Marion develops a similar line of thought. He argues that whenever we assign attributes to God in a way that makes Him conceptually graspable, we risk creating an “idol”—not a literal one, but a mental construct that reflects our limits more than ultimate reality. In this sense, debates about God’s “existence” miss the point, because they’re often about a version of God that has already been reduced to something we can comprehend.
If we can say anything at all, Marion suggests it is this: God gives. Existence, meaning, and love are not things we produce or fully understand—they are received. God is not encountered as an object or being among beings, but as the source of this giving.
That mystery, Marion suggests, is most clearly glimpsed in the life of Jesus—especially in acts of forgiveness, self-giving, and the acceptance of suffering rather than retaliation.
As my own theology has shifted away from more traditional frameworks, I found this view intellectually compelling. I’m increasingly skeptical of rigid doctrinal claims and more open to the idea of the divine as something fundamentally beyond our grasp. If God exists, it’s hard to see how finite beings could fully comprehend the infinite.
That said, I do have a critique. If God is beyond all concepts, and even attributing qualities to Him risks distortion, what are we supposed to do with that? At times, it feels indistinguishable from simply saying that existence and meaning are mysterious and ultimately unknowable. Marion gestures toward an answer, but for me, it never fully lands.
Still, I found the book deeply thought-provoking and, in many ways, more compelling than the traditional view of God as a supreme being I grew up with. I’d recommend it to anyone wrestling with similar questions or rethinking their understanding of God.
The premise reminded me of a line from Søren Kierkegaard: “God does not exist—He is eternal.” The idea is that God cannot “exist” in the same way things within time do, because that would make Him contingent—something with a beginning, subject to cause and effect. Instead, God would have to be outside those categories altogether.
Marion develops a similar line of thought. He argues that whenever we assign attributes to God in a way that makes Him conceptually graspable, we risk creating an “idol”—not a literal one, but a mental construct that reflects our limits more than ultimate reality. In this sense, debates about God’s “existence” miss the point, because they’re often about a version of God that has already been reduced to something we can comprehend.
If we can say anything at all, Marion suggests it is this: God gives. Existence, meaning, and love are not things we produce or fully understand—they are received. God is not encountered as an object or being among beings, but as the source of this giving.
That mystery, Marion suggests, is most clearly glimpsed in the life of Jesus—especially in acts of forgiveness, self-giving, and the acceptance of suffering rather than retaliation.
As my own theology has shifted away from more traditional frameworks, I found this view intellectually compelling. I’m increasingly skeptical of rigid doctrinal claims and more open to the idea of the divine as something fundamentally beyond our grasp. If God exists, it’s hard to see how finite beings could fully comprehend the infinite.
That said, I do have a critique. If God is beyond all concepts, and even attributing qualities to Him risks distortion, what are we supposed to do with that? At times, it feels indistinguishable from simply saying that existence and meaning are mysterious and ultimately unknowable. Marion gestures toward an answer, but for me, it never fully lands.
Still, I found the book deeply thought-provoking and, in many ways, more compelling than the traditional view of God as a supreme being I grew up with. I’d recommend it to anyone wrestling with similar questions or rethinking their understanding of God.
March 28, 2026
A supremely rich and dense work of theology and philosophy on God, Being, and being. Following in Heidegger's footsteps, Marion puts the metaphysical tradition to the test by critiquing it as onto-theology. He does this by investigating the concept of being as an idol; that is, how the philosophical (metaphysical) equating of God with Being. Of course, by no means does Marion want us to think God doesn't "exist" nor that he "is not"; rather, that God is beyond Being and that the being you and I might have has no relation to the Being God has.
Interactions between God and man, and creation, therefore, must be bridged. That bridging can only happen via the ultimate excess of love and icon. In the Christian tradition, this is the Crucifixion and Eucharistic Rites of the various apostolic churches. Only in the total giving of love might we come to God. In a sense, this is a modern defense of the first name of God being good or love rather than being. "The Divine Names" is a crucial piece of reference here.
This is only scratching the surface of Marion's great text. It's layered with so much going on, to limit to the ideas expressed above does disservice to the exegesis within. In the first part of the text, Marion doesn't drag St. Thomas Aquinas but does lump him together with the tradition. Like Heidegger, I believe Marion failed to distinguish between St. Thomas and the neo-scholastics. Marion, to his credit, has added a whole chapter explicitly on St. Thomas and the doctrine of God's essence is his existence. There, Marion explores how St. Thomas has a much richer account than the simple propositional equation so often attributed to him. Dedicated thomists will likely push back, with some merit, but Marion is by no means hostile to those who came before.
Richard Kearney has a text, "Heidegger's Three Gods", that explores the thought of the divine in Heidegger. It follows the typical, if not superficial then limited critique of traditional religion. Marion gives Heidegger what he deserves: an honest appraisal and critique of excess. Well worth the read for anyone interested in ontology, theology, and the development of Heidegger in contemporary philosophy.
Interactions between God and man, and creation, therefore, must be bridged. That bridging can only happen via the ultimate excess of love and icon. In the Christian tradition, this is the Crucifixion and Eucharistic Rites of the various apostolic churches. Only in the total giving of love might we come to God. In a sense, this is a modern defense of the first name of God being good or love rather than being. "The Divine Names" is a crucial piece of reference here.
This is only scratching the surface of Marion's great text. It's layered with so much going on, to limit to the ideas expressed above does disservice to the exegesis within. In the first part of the text, Marion doesn't drag St. Thomas Aquinas but does lump him together with the tradition. Like Heidegger, I believe Marion failed to distinguish between St. Thomas and the neo-scholastics. Marion, to his credit, has added a whole chapter explicitly on St. Thomas and the doctrine of God's essence is his existence. There, Marion explores how St. Thomas has a much richer account than the simple propositional equation so often attributed to him. Dedicated thomists will likely push back, with some merit, but Marion is by no means hostile to those who came before.
Richard Kearney has a text, "Heidegger's Three Gods", that explores the thought of the divine in Heidegger. It follows the typical, if not superficial then limited critique of traditional religion. Marion gives Heidegger what he deserves: an honest appraisal and critique of excess. Well worth the read for anyone interested in ontology, theology, and the development of Heidegger in contemporary philosophy.
June 7, 2024
DOES GOD “LOVE WITHOUT BEING”?
Jean-Luc Marion (born 1946) is a French philosopher and Roman Catholic theologian who is Director of Philosophy at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). He wrote in the Preface to the English edition of this 1982 book, “Written at the border between philosophy and theology, this essay remains deeply marked by the spiritual and cultural crisis in which it was thought and written. That crisis… had a time and a stake. A time: the test of nihilism which, in France, marked the years dominated by 1968. A stake: the obscuring of God in the indistinct haze of the ‘human sciences,’ which at the time were elevated by ‘structuralism’ to the rank of dominant doctrine… At issue here is not the possibility of God’s attaining Being, but, quite the opposite, the possibility of Being’s attaining to God… Under the title ‘God Without Being,’ I am attempting to bring out the absolute freedom of God with regard to all determinations, including… the fact of Being… Because FOR US, as for all the beings of the world, it is first necessary ‘to be’ in order… ‘to live and move’ … and thus eventually also to love. But FOR GOD… does the same still apply?... If, to begin with, ‘God is love,’ then God loves before being… This radical reversal of the relations between Being and loving… presupposes taking a stand that is at once theological and philosophical.”
In the introductory ‘Envoi’ section, he explains, “Under the title ‘God Without Being’ we do not mean to insinuate that God is not… we attempt to render problematic that which seems obvious… God, before all else, has to be… But does Being relate, more than anything, to God? Does God have anything to gain by being?.... Because God does not fall within the domain of Being, he comes to us in and as a gift.” (Pg. 2-3)
He says, “When a philosophical thought expressed a concept of what it then names ‘God,’ this concept functions exactly as an idol.” (Pg. 16) Later, he adds, “The barbarous surging forward of terrible and trivial ‘idols’ … of which our nihilistic age ceaselessly increases the consumption, marks the exasperation of idolatry and not, to be sure, the survival of some natural---then delinquent---desire to see God. It does not suffice to go beyond an idol in order to withdraw oneself from idolatry.” (Pg. 38)
He states, “The advent of something like ‘God’ in philosophy therefore arises less from God himself than from metaphysics, as destinal figure of the thought of Being. ‘God’ is determined starting from and to the profit of that of which metaphysics if capable, that which it can admit and support.” (Pg. 34) He adds, “what does it mean to EXIST, and is this term suitable to something like ‘God’?... In the beginning and in principle, there advenes neither God, nor a god, nor the logos, but the advent itself---Being, with an anteriority all the less shared in that it decides all the rest… The very question of the ontic priority of ‘God’ can be posed only at the heart of this advent.” (Pg. 41)
He asks, “But is it self-evident that God should have to be, hence to be as a being… in order to give himself as God?... And could one not even suspect… that, by the definition and axiom of the thought of Being as such, that the temple of Being could in no way assist, call for, admit, or promise whatever may BE concerning what one must not even NAME---God?... Undoubtedly, if ‘God’ is, he is a being; but does God have to be?” (Pg. 44)
He observes, “To think God, therefore, outside of ontological difference, outside the question of Being, as well, risks the unthinkable, indispensable, but impassable. What name, what concept, and what sign nevertheless yet remain feasible? A single one, no doubt… as Saint John proposes: ‘God is agape’ (1 Jn 4:8)” (Pg. 46-47)
He suggests, “To free ‘God’ from his quotation marks would require nothing less than to free him from metaphysics, hence from the Being of beings. To free silence from its idolatrous dishonor would require nothing less than to free the word ‘God’ from the Being of beings… But can one think outside of Being? And, in order to escape idolatry and to take away its quotation marks, does it suffice precisely no longer to mark them?” (Pg. 60)
He argues, “In the end, is it self-evident that biblical revelation transgresses neither beings in what they reveal nor Being in the manner of its revelation? Who then decides that the mode of revelation… should have to sacrifice, as a retainer fee, to Being?” (Pg. 70-71)
He notes, “biblical revelation offers, in some rare texts, the emergence of a certain indifference of being to Being… To open Being/being to the instance of a gift implies then, at the least, that the gift may decide Being/being. In other words, the gift is not at all laid out according to Being/being, but Being/being is given according to the gift. The gift delivers Being/being… The gift liberates Being/being through the very indifference by which it affects it.” (Pg. 101)
He explains, “For that which crosses Being, eventually, has the name ‘agape.’ Agape surpasses all knowledge, with a hyperbole that defines it and, indissolubly, prohibits access to it. The crossing of Being is played in our horizon, first because Being alone opens the space where beings appear, and then because agape does not belong to us in itself. We fall---in the capacity of being---under the government of Being. We do not accede---in the capacity of ‘sinners’---to agape.” (Pg. 108)
He summarizes, “Love strikes the world with vanity in all indifference to its virtues---it is an extrinsic vanity; in the same way, it touches certain beings with a grace just as extrinsic, according to which it associates with its incommensurable action the most trivial of beings: the cobblestone one passes… The difference does not at all pass between beings and nonbeings, or even between those who indeed wish to join the polarization of love, and the others; it passes between love itself and the world---being---by itself… Only love does not have to be. And God loves without being.” (Pg. 138)
He adds, “In short, our language will be able to speak of God only to the degree that God, in his Word, will speak our language and teach us in the end to speak it as he speaks it---divinely, which is to say in all abandon. In short, it is a question of learning to speak our language with the accents---with the accent of the Word speaking it… the theologian … lets the Word let him speak human language in the way that God speaks it in his Word.” (Pg. 144)
Definitely a “difficult” work, this book will nevertheless be of great interest to those studying contemporary theology and religious philosophy.
Jean-Luc Marion (born 1946) is a French philosopher and Roman Catholic theologian who is Director of Philosophy at the University of Paris IV (Sorbonne). He wrote in the Preface to the English edition of this 1982 book, “Written at the border between philosophy and theology, this essay remains deeply marked by the spiritual and cultural crisis in which it was thought and written. That crisis… had a time and a stake. A time: the test of nihilism which, in France, marked the years dominated by 1968. A stake: the obscuring of God in the indistinct haze of the ‘human sciences,’ which at the time were elevated by ‘structuralism’ to the rank of dominant doctrine… At issue here is not the possibility of God’s attaining Being, but, quite the opposite, the possibility of Being’s attaining to God… Under the title ‘God Without Being,’ I am attempting to bring out the absolute freedom of God with regard to all determinations, including… the fact of Being… Because FOR US, as for all the beings of the world, it is first necessary ‘to be’ in order… ‘to live and move’ … and thus eventually also to love. But FOR GOD… does the same still apply?... If, to begin with, ‘God is love,’ then God loves before being… This radical reversal of the relations between Being and loving… presupposes taking a stand that is at once theological and philosophical.”
In the introductory ‘Envoi’ section, he explains, “Under the title ‘God Without Being’ we do not mean to insinuate that God is not… we attempt to render problematic that which seems obvious… God, before all else, has to be… But does Being relate, more than anything, to God? Does God have anything to gain by being?.... Because God does not fall within the domain of Being, he comes to us in and as a gift.” (Pg. 2-3)
He says, “When a philosophical thought expressed a concept of what it then names ‘God,’ this concept functions exactly as an idol.” (Pg. 16) Later, he adds, “The barbarous surging forward of terrible and trivial ‘idols’ … of which our nihilistic age ceaselessly increases the consumption, marks the exasperation of idolatry and not, to be sure, the survival of some natural---then delinquent---desire to see God. It does not suffice to go beyond an idol in order to withdraw oneself from idolatry.” (Pg. 38)
He states, “The advent of something like ‘God’ in philosophy therefore arises less from God himself than from metaphysics, as destinal figure of the thought of Being. ‘God’ is determined starting from and to the profit of that of which metaphysics if capable, that which it can admit and support.” (Pg. 34) He adds, “what does it mean to EXIST, and is this term suitable to something like ‘God’?... In the beginning and in principle, there advenes neither God, nor a god, nor the logos, but the advent itself---Being, with an anteriority all the less shared in that it decides all the rest… The very question of the ontic priority of ‘God’ can be posed only at the heart of this advent.” (Pg. 41)
He asks, “But is it self-evident that God should have to be, hence to be as a being… in order to give himself as God?... And could one not even suspect… that, by the definition and axiom of the thought of Being as such, that the temple of Being could in no way assist, call for, admit, or promise whatever may BE concerning what one must not even NAME---God?... Undoubtedly, if ‘God’ is, he is a being; but does God have to be?” (Pg. 44)
He observes, “To think God, therefore, outside of ontological difference, outside the question of Being, as well, risks the unthinkable, indispensable, but impassable. What name, what concept, and what sign nevertheless yet remain feasible? A single one, no doubt… as Saint John proposes: ‘God is agape’ (1 Jn 4:8)” (Pg. 46-47)
He suggests, “To free ‘God’ from his quotation marks would require nothing less than to free him from metaphysics, hence from the Being of beings. To free silence from its idolatrous dishonor would require nothing less than to free the word ‘God’ from the Being of beings… But can one think outside of Being? And, in order to escape idolatry and to take away its quotation marks, does it suffice precisely no longer to mark them?” (Pg. 60)
He argues, “In the end, is it self-evident that biblical revelation transgresses neither beings in what they reveal nor Being in the manner of its revelation? Who then decides that the mode of revelation… should have to sacrifice, as a retainer fee, to Being?” (Pg. 70-71)
He notes, “biblical revelation offers, in some rare texts, the emergence of a certain indifference of being to Being… To open Being/being to the instance of a gift implies then, at the least, that the gift may decide Being/being. In other words, the gift is not at all laid out according to Being/being, but Being/being is given according to the gift. The gift delivers Being/being… The gift liberates Being/being through the very indifference by which it affects it.” (Pg. 101)
He explains, “For that which crosses Being, eventually, has the name ‘agape.’ Agape surpasses all knowledge, with a hyperbole that defines it and, indissolubly, prohibits access to it. The crossing of Being is played in our horizon, first because Being alone opens the space where beings appear, and then because agape does not belong to us in itself. We fall---in the capacity of being---under the government of Being. We do not accede---in the capacity of ‘sinners’---to agape.” (Pg. 108)
He summarizes, “Love strikes the world with vanity in all indifference to its virtues---it is an extrinsic vanity; in the same way, it touches certain beings with a grace just as extrinsic, according to which it associates with its incommensurable action the most trivial of beings: the cobblestone one passes… The difference does not at all pass between beings and nonbeings, or even between those who indeed wish to join the polarization of love, and the others; it passes between love itself and the world---being---by itself… Only love does not have to be. And God loves without being.” (Pg. 138)
He adds, “In short, our language will be able to speak of God only to the degree that God, in his Word, will speak our language and teach us in the end to speak it as he speaks it---divinely, which is to say in all abandon. In short, it is a question of learning to speak our language with the accents---with the accent of the Word speaking it… the theologian … lets the Word let him speak human language in the way that God speaks it in his Word.” (Pg. 144)
Definitely a “difficult” work, this book will nevertheless be of great interest to those studying contemporary theology and religious philosophy.
April 11, 2023
3.5.. It is written in a phenomenology-heavy prose that seems to strike pretty much everyone outside that community as unnecessary and pretentious. That being said, there are some very, very beautiful insights that I will not soon forget, and I enjoyed large swaths of the book.
I shouldn't be to hard on the prose-style because it is probably part-and-parcel with the uniqueness of the insights.
The title "God Without Being" is more provocative than it seems, it's about whether the traditional definition of God's essence in natural theology as 'Being' is best for our understanding of Him, and whether it sets up a conceptual idol which we should abandon and replace with 'Agape'. He's an orthodox believer, and it has beautiful things to say about the Eucharist as the hermeneutic site of meeting the Word.
I shouldn't be to hard on the prose-style because it is probably part-and-parcel with the uniqueness of the insights.
The title "God Without Being" is more provocative than it seems, it's about whether the traditional definition of God's essence in natural theology as 'Being' is best for our understanding of Him, and whether it sets up a conceptual idol which we should abandon and replace with 'Agape'. He's an orthodox believer, and it has beautiful things to say about the Eucharist as the hermeneutic site of meeting the Word.
July 28, 2018
This work is truly magnificent and surely a gift to the Church. The preparatory discussion of icons and idols in the first few chapters alone is staggering for its clarity and ingenuity, and I hope will continue to be applied by philosophers and theologians. Another hidden gem was Marion's interpretation of the prodigal son in relation to ousia. Aside from all these unexpected riches, the main thesis, that God is love before He is, was shrewdly and devotionally articulated. It is rare a book of such dense philosophy should bring me to my knees in worship, but this book certainly did so. I plan to reread this book throughout my life. Difficult, but well worth it!
July 4, 2024
Roman theology is neither loving nor pastoral... which is to say it fails as theology. This book is pure philosophy and has little to say about the living Word who is Jesus. RCs are slowly working their way out of the dark ages... still. Marion has brought them closer by pointing to revelation, but is still lost in human-centered reason. Not to mention the fact that his phenomenology is largely an idiosyncratic exercise in personal reflection rather than a meditation on the meaning of shared religious experience. Nothing worth reading here.
December 24, 2024
This work aligns well with Benedictine spirituality as well as the apophatic theology more characteristic of Orthodoxy, where the full essence of God is deemed unknowable. It raises questions about the limitations of perceptible knowledge and the mesage of relationality.
Long story short: "Before God gives, God is." Marion's theology emphasizes the "gift" of God before the "is" of God.
Long story short: "Before God gives, God is." Marion's theology emphasizes the "gift" of God before the "is" of God.
July 24, 2021
Trying to speak what escaped speech, but nonetheless returning too frequently to past philosophers to become even more provocative.
February 15, 2024
Difficult and complex, one to come back to but very insightful.
January 6, 2015
Should God exist? Should God have a form, an icon, or an idol? Marion explores the possibility of a God who would not be, who would not have a being. He sees God in agape, Christian charity, or love and obviates the need for imagining or positing the existence or being of God. He thinks that the ‘unthinkable forces us to substitute the idolatrous quotation marks around “God” with the very God that no mark of knowledge can demarcate, and, in order to say it’ (46) he crosses the ‘o’ in God and continues this notation in the rest of the book. The second edition and a translation of the original French, this book is a volume in the series Religion and Postmodernism brought out by the University of Chicago Press. In a daring postmodern spirit, the author tries to do away with a personality of God because he is concerned that ‘we manage so poorly to keep silent before that which we cannot express in a statement’ (59) Attempts to express the inexpressible creates a false image of God, who exists even before actually being. It is a pity that the author rests his arguments based only on Christian scriptures and does not refer to scriptures from other religions, such as those of the East. Had he done so, he would have come across interesting insights on God without being in those texts. With elaborate notes and references to major thinkers on religion and theology, this book is a profound study on the perception of God with an identity.
October 31, 2025
Penso che questo libro abbia totalmente svoltato il mio modo di intendere la devozione e la metafisica. Un'opera che è quasi un percorso iniziatico oltre ad essere uno studio puntualissimo che critica ed esplora i confini sconfinati della fenomenologia per tradurli nell'esperienza religiosa, e in realtà andrebbe forse scritto nelle esperienze religiose, affinché qualunque sia la "figura" centrale ci si fidi un po' meno degli idoli.
Più che un testo di teologia, direi che è un grande esempio di mistica contemporanea: probabilmente Jean-Luc Marion avrebbe conversato volentieri con Dionigi l'Areopagita, magari non si sarebbero detti una parola e avrebbero concordato su tutto. O quasi.
Più che un testo di teologia, direi che è un grande esempio di mistica contemporanea: probabilmente Jean-Luc Marion avrebbe conversato volentieri con Dionigi l'Areopagita, magari non si sarebbero detti una parola e avrebbero concordato su tutto. O quasi.
September 1, 2015
If there is going to be one book that I will go back to in my formation as a student of philosophy and theology, God Without Being would be it. It provides us more or less a phenomenological description of the experience of Revelation, and explains it in great detail which is easier to follow than, say, guys like Schleiermacher.
May 16, 2012
Insightful. Provides a deep background for considering issues of liturgy, church life and politics. I'm looking forward to the everyman's edition. If JP2's Theology of the Body can become The Thrill of the Chaste, perhaps this might become, "To Be Or Not To Be: It's Not Even a Question."
March 2, 2008
One of the best books I've ever read: no question.
October 2, 2011
Solid spiritual analysis of mankind's remarkably flawed perception of metaphysical realities
June 9, 2014
New ways to approch the God question phenomenologically. Difficult but exciting to read.
May 7, 2015
er....
September 22, 2015
La mente spinta all'estremità.
September 10, 2016
Brilliant in places. Obscure in others. The book gives rise to a lot of thought.
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