The Future of Post‐Metaphysical Theology

Abstract

Should theology pursue the modern rejection of metaphysics or return back to metaphysics? One could understand the relationship between theology and metaphysics along these binary lines. Post-metaphysical theology certainly does so. It attempts to develop a theological method that excludes any form of metaphysics. This is, however, only one way of reading the relationship between theology and metaphysics, and this paper opts for a different approach. It contends that this aut-aut leads to no veritable solution, and the history of post-metaphysical theology is a case in point. For this reason, this paper goes for an et-et approach. This does not mean simply counterbalancing a theology without metaphysics with a metaphysical theology, leading to the co-existence of two parallel methods. That would be equal to taking the figurative pendulum of ideas in the opposite direction without answering the questions of post-metaphysics. Rather, the way forward lies in a metaphysical theology of a certain kind that understands and honours the critiques and questions of post-metaphysics, though without forfeiting its metaphysical dimension. Here lies the future of post-metaphysical theology as this paper sees it. 1 In what follows, I will first provide an overview of the present situation of post-metaphysical theology and then proceed to highlighting its philosophical and theological limitations. In its final section, this paper will then venture into the field of analogical discourse and develop its et-et alternative to the aut-aut between theology's rejection of metaphysics and its return back to metaphysics. I. AN OVERVIEW OF THE CONTEMPORARY SITUATIONUntil recently, metaphysics was not even a question in theology: it was considered to be passée. Its decline started with Pascal's separation of the God of the Scriptures from the God of the philosophers and continued with Kant and Nietzsche. However, it was phenomenology-at least within the Continental tradition-that dealt metaphysics its final blow. 2 This philosophical current comes in many shapes and forms, but the most important voices within phenomenology all concur that the metaphysical understanding of God and the world is no longer tenable. God belongs to the realm of theology and cannot be the cornerstone of the renewed philosophical method that phenomenology is seeking. It is, therefore, time for a different and new prima philosophia to take over from metaphysics. 3 Heidegger replaced metaphysics with his alethiological ontology, Lévinas replaced it with an ethics, and Derrida opted for a philosophy of différance. Notwithstanding the variety in approaches, they all have one common intent: that of overcoming metaphysics.