Heidegger’s God: Against Caputo, Kearney, and Marion

Philosophy & Theology 26:2 (2014)

Duane Armitage
Gonzaga University

Abstract: This essay argues that Heidegger’s theological thinking, best expressed by his “last
god” from his 1930s Contributions to Philosophy, is a radicalization of his early Pauline
phenomenology from the 1920s. I claim that Heidegger’s theological thinking, including his
onto-theological critique, is in no way incompatible with Christian philosophy, but in fact
furthers the Christian philosophical endeavor. The tenability of this thesis rests on disputing
three critiques of Heidegger’s theology put forth by John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, and Jean-
luc Marion, all of whom argue that Heidegger and Christianity are incompatible.

This essay argues that Heidegger’s theological thinking, best expressed by his “last god”
from his 1930s Contributions to Philosophy, is a radicalization and thus continuation from his
early Pauline phenomenology from the 1920s. I argue for this specific reading of Heidegger’s
“theology” in order to further the claim that Heidegger’s theological thinking, including his onto-
theological critique, is in no way incompatible or antithetical with Christian philosophy, but in
fact furthers the Christian philosophical endeavor. After discussing Heidegger’s “last god,” it
will therefore be necessary, in order to further my thesis, to dispute three relevant critiques of
Heidegger’s theology put forth by John D. Caputo, Richard Kearney, and Jean-luc Marion, all of
whom argue that Heidegger and Christianity are incompatible.
What is the last god, for Heidegger? And why is this “last god” the best summary of his
theological thinking? To answer the second question first, the last god is, quantitatively, the
largest section (roughly ten pages in German) in Heidegger’s writings devoted solely to thinking
the question of God vis-à-vis being. Furthermore, the thinking of the last god presented in
Contributions remains consistent with the way in which Heidegger speaks of God or “gods” in
his Hölderlin lectures (contemporaneous with Contributions) and in his later philosophy (e.g.
Poetically Man Dwells, The Onto-Theological Character of Metaphysics, etc.).
Returning to the initial question, “What is the last god?” In an attempt to answer this
question devoid of “Heideggerian jargon,” I offer the following concise reply: the last god is
simply the presence of the holy as it appears or manifests itself out of the negative or concealed
dimension of existence (being) when and only when metaphysics is overcome by thinking
through the conditions for its possibility. By manifests or appears, I mean simply the way God
comes to have meaning within a world as an open relational context of meaning within which
humans live. What is meant by the negative, concealed dimension of existence (being)? Firstly, I
do not intend to equate Heidegger’s nuanced “being” or “beyng” (das Seyn)1 with the
philosophically loaded concept “existence.” However, for the sake of readability and initial
comprehension it is necessary to offer a clear presentation of what exactly Heidegger means by
the last god through a recognizable vocabulary. As to what is meant by “the negative, concealed

1
I follow Rojcewicz and Vellega-Neu in their translation of “das Seyn” as “beyng.” The meaning of this term within
Heidegger’s Contributions will be discussed later.
dimension of existence (beyng)”, such will have to be fleshed out as we briefly tackle
Heidegger’s understanding of beyng in Contributions, as well as what he means by the “truth of
beyng” and the “essence(ing) of beyng.”
In Contributions to Philosophy, “Seyn” (from now on beyng), “truth” or “the truth of
beyng,” the “essence of beyng,” and the Event (Ereignis) all mean roughly the same thing, albeit
thought from different perspectives. I shall again attempt to summarize clearly and concisely:
The event of beyng amounts to quite simply the event of truth thought as a-letheia, namely the
revealing/concealing of things in their meaning. That is, existence as beyng contains a positive
(revealing) and negative (concealing) dimension, and as things (beings) are given meaning (or
come to have an essence) in a world, other meanings recede or conceal themselves. Indeed much
of Contributions is an attempt by Heidegger to think this negative, concealed dimension of
existence. The event (of being) is therefore the happening of truth where things come to have
meaning, or appear in their essence, and as things come to have meaning, other possibilities of
meaning are closed off. Yet it is in this closed off or concealed dimension of truth/being, that
Heidegger wishes to seek the divine, for the holy itself appears solely in and through an
awareness (Besinnung) of this dimension. For Heidegger, however, modern technology, the
dominant metaphysics of modernity, makes thinking concealment and therefore god almost
impossible, for the essence of global technology (Gestell) is itself an attempt to close off other
possibilities and reduce the meaning of things (and of existence itself) to one meaning.
Returning to my initial argument, I would like to examine why this theological thinking
in Contributions has its origins in Heidegger’s early Christian phenomenology on St. Paul.
Heidegger’s thinking of primordial Christian experience in the 1920s in his The Phenomenology
of Religious Life centers around existential structures familiar to those put forth in Being and
Time, namely projection upon an “ownmost” possibility in anxiety. In Being and Time, such
existential projection in angst occurred by way of the “call” of Dasein’s conscience, calling
Dasein to own its being (authenticity) vis-à-vis das Man. Such authenticity, in Being and Time,
discloses for Heidegger a primordial, lived temporality and is the first step in an understanding of
being’s meaning. In Heidegger’s discussion of Pauline Christianity, these existential structures
of the subsequent Being and Time appear in a more religiously couched language. Faith,
essentially synonymous with what will later be called “authenticity,” is the response to a “call”
out of distress (die Not) in anticipating the not-yet of the furtural Parousia, effectively separating
the Christian from “the world” (an analog to the later das Man). In both periods, for Heidegger,
the existential structure of authenticity (whether demythologized or not) occurs in a passive and
powerless response, thus even anticipating Heidegger’s very late work on Gelassenheit.
Interestingly, these same existential structures rear their head again in Heidegger’s
Contributions, albeit thought from a historical perspective of being (Seynsgeschichtlichedenken)
rather than religiously or purely existentially. That is, in Contributions, the human being,
distressed from “being’s abandonment” (the nihilism of the concealed-concealment of being
proper to metaphysics and technology), is “called” by the last god to enact a necessary
(notwendig) turn (wendig) out of the nihilism of metaphysics and leap into an unchartered
territory of thinking (erdenken), yet again in distressed anticipation of the coming futural not-yet:
the last god. Heidegger refers to this complicated existential process as simply the event (of
beyng, of truth). Note that the event (Er-eignis) is again a rethinking of the authenticity structure
in a more original way. In Contributions, authenticity qua Er-eignis is now wedded to the
project of overcoming metaphysics’ concealing of the concealed essence of truth. It is
interesting to note that Heidegger, late in Contributions, refers to thinking the concealed-
concealment as faith (Heidegger 2011, 291).
Recall my earlier definition of the last god as the holy appearing out of the concealed
dimension of existence (beyng/truth/event) when and only when metaphysics is overcome by
thinking through its conditions for possibility. What are metaphysics’ conditions for possibility?
Put simply: the event of beyng/truth in its clearing-concealing nature. Thinking this event
amounts to recognizing the very thing metaphysics missed, namely the essential concealment
proper to truth, for this concealing dimension of existence is the very place where “God” or “the
holy” appears. Metaphysics then, insofar as it misses concealment and therefore its own
conditions for possibility, can never adequately think the holy. Rather, metaphysics can only
think onto-theologically, that is, it can only clear a very specific space for God as either the
“most real being” relative to beings, or “being itself” relative to the essence of things.
In Contributions, metaphysics (qua nihilism) functions as the inauthenticity of the current
age and thus as the analog to das Man and the world in Being and Time and The Phenomenology
of Religious Life respectively. Er-eignis qua authentic thinking, which in distress responds to the
call of the last god, functions as the analog to authenticity and faith. Most importantly, the last
god functions as the analog to both Parousia and death (Dasein’s ownmost possibility), both of
which remain essentially futural and hence must be anticipated in existential anxiety or distress.
Thus, the very same existential structures that Heidegger first presented in his analysis of
primordial Christianity remain almost completely intact in his thinking of the last god in
Contributions. Moreover, in his initial phenomenology of early Christian existence, Heidegger
sought to divorce enacted Christian existence from a kind of objectivism and dogmatism that he
thought burdened the (then) current trends in philosophy of religion. In the same way,
Heidegger’s thinking of the last god attempts to divorce itself from the onto-theology of
metaphysics that seeks to corner God into the category of being and ground.
If indeed Heidegger’s thinking from 1920 to 1938 has retained structurally the very same
existential categories that were first put forth as essentially “Pauline,” could then Heidegger’s
thinking be as anti-Christian and neo-pagan as some philosophers argue? It is true that Heidegger
argues that the last god is wholly other than Christianity’s god. However upon closer inspection
the Christian god, for Heidegger in Contributions, refers to the deity thought in a very specific
way, namely as the beingness (ground) of things – again anticipating the much later onto-
theological critique. It is not then that the last god is anti-Christian so much as anti-metaphysical
– Christianity merely being the container through which metaphysics was historically preserved.
That is, opposed to the “metaphysical Christian god” lies the last god grasped out of the refusing
concealment of existence (truth, beyng, event), which is not anti-Christian, but other than the
idolized metaphysical conception of God. Since Heidegger’s thinking is not anti-Christian, but
anti-metaphysical, coupled with the retention in his thinking of the original Pauline existential
categories (categories that, Heidegger claims, have phenomenologically disclosed themselves via
his careful reading of St. Paul), I believe this points to a clear continuation (albeit a
radicalization) of a project that is certainly not hostile to Christianity nor in anyway “neo-pagan.”
Allow me now to briefly turn to three critiques, leveled at Heidegger’s theological
thinking, that claim hostility to Christianity, God, and/or an affinity to a kind of paganism.
Firstly, John D. Caputo, in his Demythologizing Heidegger and in various other published
articles, maintains a very hard reading of Heidegger’s “disengagement” with Christianity after
the early 1920s. While acknowledging the structural similarities between Heidegger’s early
phenomenology of religion and the last god, Caputo argues that Heidegger had turned his back
entirely on Christianity and had “lost all interest” in it during the mid 1930s (Caputo 2006, 338;
Caputo 2002, 4). Caputo posits a complete break with the Pauline religiosity of the early 1920s.
Caputo’s critique centers almost exclusively upon Heidegger’s own admission and plea for
“methodological atheism” in his Introduction to Metaphysics course. In this text, Heidegger
warns of the paralysis that can occur to questioning if methodological atheism is avoided. Yet, if
one looks more carefully at Heidegger’s methodological atheism, it appears to be precisely that –
methodological atheism, and not an endorsement of atheism itself. Yet why appeal to an
atheistic methodology? Such an appeal lies in Heidegger’s wish to avoid onto-theological and
metaphysical thinking, the kind of thinking where God is poised to enter into the metaphysical
system in a very specific way, namely as the circulation between the highest being and the Being
of beings (specifically and generally respectively). Recourse therefore to methodological
atheism is in perfect keeping with Heidegger’s desire to “twist free” of metaphysical thinking.
Heidegger is uninterested in the metaphysical theorizing of God as any kind of substance
(Beingness); therefore, recourse to a deconstructive phenomenology that seeks to unearth hidden
possibilities in factical Christian life (Heidegger’s readings of Paul) is just as methodologically
atheistic as the phenomenological method of Being and Time, in that neither seeks to build a
system with God as ground. Methodological atheism means then anti-metaphysical (anti-onto-
theological) thinking. Perhaps Caputo mistakes Heidegger’s confrontation with metaphysical
Christendom as a confrontation with Christianity itself?
Caputo further argues that Heidegger’s theological thinking, especially in his
Contributions and Hölderlin readings, devolves into a kind of neo-pagan mythologizing of a
“woodland god” or god of the earth, and not the ethico-religious God of the Hebrew and
Christian scriptures (Caputo 1993, 184). Caputo sees Heidegger’s thought as having taken three
turns (Kehren), each of which having its own religious theme: (1.) From Catholicism to
Protestantism (1917-1919), which we see in the Marburg, Freiburg, and Being and Time periods;
(2.) a turn toward extreme heroic and Nietzsche voluntarism (1928-29); and (3.) a move beyond
voluntarism toward a new mytho-poetic meditation upon the Holy and gods, and to the thinking
of being (1936-38) (Caputo 2006, 343; Caputo 1993, 184). This third period of Contributions,
according to Caputo, ultimately culminates in the later Heideggerian mysticism of Gelassenheit
(Caputo 2006, 337). As noted above, Gelassenheit is not necessarily radically innovative in
Heidegger’s thinking, for the passive and powerless waiting in response to a call was present in
Heidegger’s thinking as early as 1920. Moreover, powerless anticipation (both characteristic of
Gelassenheit) likely has even deeper roots in Heidegger’s study of Martin Luther, who sees
salvation as a free “gift” of God, which must be anticipated in “tensed hope,” and lying wholly
outside the will’s ability to will.
Caputo’s characterization of Heidegger’s three turns, I believe, is rather hasty in that it
posits radical shifts in Heidegger’s thinking, rather than recognizing the continuity and fluidity.
Yet Caputo himself recognizes the possibility that Heidegger may have indeed merely
transferred “the categories of Christianity” to his later thinking of early Greek texts. Moreover,
Caputo seems to debate, back and forth in his own texts, whether or not Heidegger simply
secularized a “fundamentally biblical conception of the history of salvation” (Caputo 1993, 180-
181). Yet in the end, Caputo argues that Heidegger has set up a “rival mythology” over and
against the Judeo-Christian tradition, and that Heidegger erects a thinking that is purposely
exclusive of Christian themes, rather than, as I have argued, applying existentially Christian
categories to the historical thinking of being. Regardless, it is clear that, despite his anti-Christian
reading, Caputo is forced to acknowledge the continuity in Heidegger’s existential thinking.
 Secondly, I’d like to address Richard Kearney’s criticisms, which are critical of
Heidegger on matters of both Christianity and ethics. In his Strangers, Gods, and Monsters
Kearney devotes considerable time to discussion of the last god of Contributions. Kearney
argues that there is “no place for ethical action” in Heidegger’s thinking of the last god, and that
it ultimately leads to an “extreme quietism.” Furthermore, the anticipation of the coming of the
last god, for Kearney, appears more “pagan-poetic” than “ethico-religious”(Kearney 2003, 220).
Kearney begins his criticisms by addressing what he perceives as the lack of any
“eschatological attitude” in the last god. While Kearney acknowledges that there may be
somewhat of an eschatology at work in Heidegger’s notion of being, this proves insufficient for
Kearney since it remains strictly a finite ontology (Kearney 2003, 218). Kearney cites Heidegger:
“Here the innermost finitude of beyng reveals itself: in the hint of the last god” (Heidegger 1989,
410). There are several problems with Kearney’s reading. Firstly, there clearly exists a form of
eschatology, not merely of beyng, but of the last god in Heidegger’s thought. One could argue
that Heidegger’s theological thinking, from Paul to Contributions, is entirely eschatological
insofar as one is always in anticipation towards the futural coming of the divine. Heidegger’s
concern with the divine is always a concern for the eschaton, the end, or the last as a “not-yet.”
Moreover, it is unclear what is problematic about a finite ontology within Heidegger’s context,
for Heidegger in no way conflates beyng and God, and thus is not arguing that the last god is
finite in any ontological or metaphysical sense. In fact, it seems Kearney’s critique amounts to
an equivocation of the term finite (Endlichkeit), for otherwise there would remain no problem
with the term. That is, only if Kearney takes Heidegger to mean that the last god is finite in any
ontological or metaphysical sense (which I take Kearney to mean here) can there be religious
implications. For Heidegger’s use of the term finite in relation to beyng is meant to be
understood in the context of beyng as truth or unconcealment, which in its revealing always
withholds and refuses. Such is the context from the selected quotation Kearney cites (Section
256). As said above, the last god appears out of the concealed dimension of truth, understood in
the context of Heidegger’s critique of the Christian “god” as Beingness and ground. Therefore in
saying that the last god happens out of the finitude of beyng, Heidegger is in no way making any
dogmatic assertions concerning the infinite or finite nature of the deity (for such assertions are
wholly other to the non-metaphysical thinking in Contributions).
Kearney further argues concerning the fundamental mood of distress (die Not) and the
last god:

“The Last God is refractory to ethical or historical action in that it fills those it deigns to
inspire with ‘fear’ (Erschrecken) and ‘awe’ (Scheu)….the terrifying destitution of God
(Not den Gottes) petrifies us. Before it we lapse into an attitude of passive silence
(Erschweigung). We experience nothing …Heidegger’s Last God inhabits a zone of
unsayable indigence and distress. And it seems to me that such a space is far removed
from eschatological hope in a god of eternal promise, kenotic giving or theophanic
redemption” (Kearney 2003, 218-219).

While Heidegger does argue that one of the fundamental moods of the “other beginning” will be
a kind of “being startled” (Erschrecken), this fundamental mood is thought within the context of
the abandonment of being (nihilism), in contrast to the mood of the first beginning (of
metaphysics)– wonder. The mood of “being startled” concerns the absolute shock of beyng (here
thought as “meaning”) having abandoned beings, and not the coming of the last god in the sense
of petrifying us. Furthermore, this startling does not at all indicate a passive quietism, for
Heidegger writes, “this being startled is not a simple evading, nor is it a helpless surrender of the
will” (Heidegger 2011, 11). Therefore, Kearney is incorrect in assuming that before the last god
we feel a “fear” resulting in quietism. Most importantly, the “distress of god” (Not den Gottes)
has little to do with a “fear” or “terror” before God, but rather a distressed and anxious
anticipation before God’s coming. Kearney seems to misinterpret the sense by which Heidegger
uses the term “die Not” in the context of the last god. The distressed anticipation of the last god
is not a “negative” experience, any more than the distressed waiting for the Parousia was
negative for the early Christian. Distress therefore needs to be thought, again, in the Pauline
sense of apokaradokia, or as Luther translates it: anxious waiting (ängstliche Harren).
While Kearney is certainly correct in recognizing the impotency and powerlessness of
one before the call of the last god, it is perhaps incorrect to go as far as assessing this as an
“extreme quietism.” Such assessment, I believe, results from a further equivocation by Kearney
of Heidegger’s use of “will.” Kearney seems to understand Heidegger as advocating a complete
and total inactivity in awaiting the last god. However, within the context of Contributions, it is
clear that Heidegger uses the term will in a very specific sense, namely as the Nietzschean Will-
to-Power. For Heidegger, the present age of nihilism is characterized by the metaphysical
culmination of the run-rampant Will-to-Power in the guise of Global technology. Therefore,
while Kearney is correct in recognizing the impotency before the last god, he (and Caputo as
well) is incorrect in understanding this impotency as complete inactivity. The impotency before
the last god is rather a metaphysical impotency – a non-willing that does not assault or en-frame
beings, or reduce their meaning to one meaning. I argue for this reading simply because of the
activity implied in Heidegger’s notion of Da-sein as grounder and as one to come who poetically
names and calls-forth God into unconcealment. Ultimately, of course, such activity is primarily
a response to the call or hint of God, yet it is not a total incapacitation.
Poetic-naming/grounding therefore, I believe, leave room and eventually equate to a
more active and even ethical role in Heidegger’s thinking. In a later essay of Heidegger’s
entitled Poetically Man Dwells, Heidegger begins to speak of poetic dwelling as kindness
(Freundlichkeit). Poetic dwelling, poetry itself, for Heidegger, is a kind of measuring of oneself
against the Godhead. Heidegger cites Hölderlin,

“…As long as Kindness,

The Pure, still stays with his heart, man
Not Unhappily measures himself
Against the Godhead…”

One measures oneself happily against the Godhead to the extent that one has kindness with one’s
heart. Kindness, or charis as Heidegger translates the Greek, is authentic poetry. “When this
measuring appropriately comes to light, man creates poetry from the very nature of the poetic”
(Heidegger 1975, 227). Poetry here means then not a literal poetry, but rather a poiesis, which
means having kindness or friendliness with one’s heart and toward beings. Moreover, and
perhaps most importantly, when one happily measures oneself against God in kindness, one can
poetically image-forth God and become the image of God. Image here means for Heidegger that
which “lets something be seen…[that which] lets the invisible be seen and so images the
invisible in something alien to it” (Heidegger 1975, 223). Poetry is therefore an imaging; poetry
is kindness imaging-forth God. This later essay therefore seems to uniquely bring together the
poetic, the ethical, and the theological in Heidegger’s thought.
It is worth noting that such is precisely how Kearney appropriates Heidegger’s thinking
in his The God Who May Be, for Kearney speaks of possibilizing God in and out of ethical action
(Kearney 2001, 91-93). That is, in the ethical act, for Kearney, God enters into the world and
shines-forth. Kearney acknowledges his accord and debt with Heidegger in this regard, in the
form of the Thomistic category of analogy, namely Dasein: being; humans: God (Kearney 2003,
227). I take Kearney to mean that, in the ethical act, the human being becomes effectively the
“Da” of God, the place or clearing where God can, but for a brief moment, happen. God “may
be” if the human being lets God be. God needs humans, just as the last god needs Da-sein.
Kearney’s anti-ethical criticism of Heidegger is therefore quite ironic, since Kearney seems to
have appropriated from Heidegger this very same ”ethico-theological” conception of poetry.
True, Heidegger’s poetic ethic advocates a kind of passive impotency, but only in a metaphysical
sense; Heidegger does advocate an “activity” that is a kind of measuring and dwelling, but one
that is wholly other to the activity of metaphysical enframing. Heidegger’s poetic ethic could
perhaps be characterized as an ethic of response, insofar as Heidegger’s understanding of poetic
dwelling/imaging is a response to the call of God.
Finally, while Jean-Luc Marion never particularly addresses Heidegger’s last god, he is
probably the most well-known contemporary philosopher/theologian who has attempted to
engage Heidegger’s “theology.” However, I believe that Heide `gger’s last god avoids nearly
all criticisms which Marion brings to Heidegger, and thus a brief dialogue with Marion here can
prove fruitful in reopening the latent possibilities in Heidegger’s theological thinking that
Marion’s criticisms have failed to address.
According to Marion, Heidegger ultimately subordinates God to being (beyng), and, in
doing so, creates an idol of being (beyng) itself. For Marion, the problem lies in Heidegger’s
subordination of God to being’s happening (Marion 1991, 44-45). Such subordination is a deeper
and even worse Idolatry than the Idolatry present in metaphysics; it is an Idolatry of being and of
ontological difference. Furthermore, Marion is critical of what he terms Heidegger’s thinking of
being as the “screen” or horizon through which God can manifest itself. Making being a pre-
given horizon, for Marion, makes God subject and subordinate to being, for it controls God’s
own manifestation. The blasphemy for Marion lies in “the anteriority” of being, that is, in
being’s anteriority to God.
Tristan Moyle has defended Heidegger against Marion’s “anteriority” criticism, arguing
that Marion’s criticism of such a pre-given anteriority is unfounded precisely because of the
radical transformation that God enacts in the realm of Being. There is therefore nothing anterior
to the coming of the Holy, for “faith utterly transforms the aesthetic domain, from the ground
up” (Moyle 2005, 125). While I certainly agree with Moyle’s reading and critique of Marion, I
believe there is perhaps an even deeper problem with Marion’s “anteriority” critique. The
problem lies firstly with Marion’s understanding, again, of Heidegger’s “methodological
atheism,” or what Marion calls the “suspension of God.” Marion argues that such suspension
immediately gives rise to idolatry. Marion writes,

“[S]uch a suspension – phenomenologically inevitable – implies theologically an instance

anterior to ‘God,’ hence that point from which idolatry could dawn…This suspension in
turn implies…an aim that suspends every ontic position; Dasein exerts this aim, and no
term could appear unless aimed at and seen by it. Dasein precedes in advance, according
 to gods, the divine, the holy, ‘God,’ his life and his death. ‘God,’ aimed at like every
other being by Dasein in the mode of a placement in parentheses, submits to the first
condition of the possibility of an idolatry” (Marion 1991, 43).

Marion seems here to gloss over rather hastily the “phenomenological inevitability” of
methodological atheism, and argues that such “suspending” is the very cause of the anteriority of
being, and thus of idolatry itself. Marion’s point therefore runs radically contrary to Heidegger’s
deconstructive impetus vis-à-vis metaphysics. Marion, like Caputo, misunderstands the nature
and need for the atheistic “suspension,” a need which arises out of the very seeking to avoid
idolatry. Furthermore, it seems Marion wishes to make Heidegger’s philosophy into a theology,
that is, into a thinking which seeks to think solely the divine, wholly separate from human
experience. For Heidegger has said, and as Marion has pointed out, that if he were to write a
theology it would not contain the word “being.” Yet, when Marion speaks of the Heideggerian
idolatry, he immediately proposes the need to “think God without any conditions, not even that
of being, hence to think God without pretending to inscribe him [in being] or to describe him as a
being” (Marion 1991, 61). Marion argues for the pressing need to go beyond the thinking of
being and of ontological difference, in order to think God properly, free from any idolatrous
concepts. The problem, however, lies in Marion imposing something foreign onto Heideggerian
philosophy, namely to think God, and further to think God separately from human factical
existence and comportment. For Marion God qua the saturated phenomenon remains the proper
Gegenstand of philosophy of religion.2 Heidegger, however, sought to think the divine solely in
relation to phenomenology and concrete historical being-in-the-world, and thus what Marion
attempts it seems is a regress into the metaphysically dependent thinking of negative theology,
especially in his writing God (G×d) crossed out. Marion argues for writing God this way because
it helps us realize the inability of our intellect to grasp God; God is something that always
saturates the intellect. Moreover, Marion’s says that “love” (not being) is the only term that “still
remains, paradoxically, unthought enough to free, someday at least, the thought of G×d from the
secondary [Heideggerian] idolatry” (Marion 1991, 47).
Marion’s inscribing of God in love seems quite in keeping with Thomistic analogical
predication, as it acknowledges the limit of finite conceptuality to predicate of the infinite God.
Such thinking however only arises, it seems, out of Marion’s consent to the apophatic theological
endeavor to think God, and to recognize the limits of such an endeavor. However, I argue that
such an endeavor is contrary and antithetical to the Heideggerian enterprise as a whole. For
Heidegger never attempts a theology of thinking God, i.e. God is never the Gegenstand of
Heidegger’s investigation. Rather Heidegger attempts to think how God can come to appear
meaningfully in the world in relation to the historical comportment of the human being in the
wake of the nihilism of metaphysics. Heidegger always thinks God as “the holy” via the
concealed dimensions of existence. So while Marion concedes and attempts to think within the
Heideggerian overcoming of metaphysics, Marion’s criticisms of Heidegger remain unfounded,
since Marion reinstates Heidegger back into a metaphysical-theological project in order to
criticize him.

2
For discussion concerning the differing “objects” of phenomenology according to Marion and Heidegger Cf. James
K.A Smith, “Liberating Religion from Theology: Marion and Heidegger on the Possibility of a Phenomenology of
Religion,” 17-33, 1999.
 The aim of Heidegger’s onto-theological critique of metaphysics, which Marion himself
partly endorses, is to overcome the nihilism of metaphysical thinking resulting from the oblivion
of concealment. The last god is Heidegger’s attempt to think the meaning of God non-
metaphysically and thus non-nihilistically. This thinking can only occur if human beings first
recognize the negative, concealing aspect of a-lēthēia. This project is not antithetical to
Christianity, but in fact seeks to overcome impediments to experiencing God meaningfully.
Heidegger writes, “the godless thinking which must abandon the god of philosophy …is thus
perhaps closer to the divine God. Here this means only: godless thinking is more open to Him
than onto-theo-logic would like to admit” (Heidegger 1969, 72).
Moreover, at the heart of interpretations of Heidegger as anti-Christian lies a fundamental
misunderstanding of the Heideggerian deconstructive enterprise. Denken, for Heidegger, can
never be an endeavor divorced from history and tradition (whether it be the metaphysical or the
theological faith tradition). Thinking – qua deconstruction that seeks to twist free of
metaphysics– is rather wholly dependent upon history and tradition and thus absolutely must
engage such. Therefore, to argue that Heidegger’s thinking is anti-Christian would be to look
only at one side of Heidegger’s deconstructive project. Heidegger intends not to destroy the
tradition in order to make way for something radically new, but rather, in the process of
deconstructing the tradition, come to a more original abiding in it. Thus, there is no
deconstructive thought without the Judeo-Christian onto-theological tradition to deconstruct.
Heidegger’s thinking is then not anti-Christian, but anti-metaphysical in that it seeks to unfreeze
or dissolve ossifications of onto-theological concepts concerning God. Such deconstruction and
overcoming of fixed concepts can only occur vis-a-vis something to deconstruct
Heidegger advocates not an anti-Christian neo-Pagan theology of “gods” or “divinities,”
but rather calls for us to think deconstructively and phenomenologically concerning western
historicity. Heidegger calls for a search for the phenomenological experience of the “holy” or
“God” within the very concepts that Christianity has handed down, and, in the spirit of
Kierkegaardian inwardness, to appropriate and own it (thus Heidegger’s emphasis on the eigen
(owning) of Er-eignis). It is not as though anything novel happens in the event of the last god,
but rather a re-appropriation of the tradition, which simultaneously means the destruction and
overcoming of that tradition. Since the tradition is saturated with Christianity (and thus
metaphysics), it can only remain within this saturation, yet at a newly founded distance.
Moreover, as shown above, the existential categories of his early theological thinking that he
claims to have received from St. Paul, follow Heidegger, albeit in slightly different mutations,
throughout his later thinking. Thus, Heidegger’s “Pauline religiosity” remains continual within
his philosophy.
As late as the Der Spiegel interview, Heidegger still insists that philosophical thinking
can do nothing but prepare and thus enable a unique kind of anticipation for the coming of the
god:

“Philosophy will not be able to effect any immediate transformation of the present
condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all human reflection
and striving. Only a god can still save us. I see the only possibility of salvation in the
process of preparing a readiness, through thinking and poetizing, for the appearance of
the god or for the absence of the god in the decline. We will not “croak,” to put it bluntly,
but rather, if we go under, we will do so face-to-face with an absent god” (Heidegger
2009, 326).
Heidegger’s famous remark - “only a god can save us,” is usually dismissed by Heideggerians as
irrelevant to the rest of his thinking. Yet this remark is indeed in perfect keeping with the
theological thinking presented above that first began with his examination of St. Paul and
Urchristentum and continued to his thinking of the last god in Contributions. For Heidegger, in a
sense, this has always been the goal of deconstructive philosophical thinking, namely to prepare
for the coming of God in anxious anticipation.
 Works Cited

Caputo, John D. 1993. Demythologizing Heidegger. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.

____________. 2002. “Introduction: Who Comes After The God Of Metaphysics?” In The
Religious. Edited by John D. Caputo. Blackwell Publishers.
_____________. 2006. “Heidegger and Theology.” In The Cambridge Companion to Heidegger.
Edited by Charles Guignon, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Heidegger, Martin. 1969. “The Onto-theological Constitution of Metaphysics.” In Identity and
Difference. Translated by Joan Stambaugh. New York: Harper and Rowe.
_______________. 1975. Poetry, Language, Thought. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. New York:
Harper and Row.
______________. 1989. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 65: Beiträge zur Philosophie: Vom Ereignis.
Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann.
______________. 2009. The Heidegger Reader. Edited with an Introduction by Günter Figal
Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
______________. 2011. Contributions to Philosophy: Of The Event. Translated by Richard
Rojcewicz and Daniella Vallega-Neu. Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Kearney, Richard. 2001. The God Who May Be. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
______________. 2003. Strangers, Gods, and Monsters. Routledge.
Marion, Jean-Luc. 1991. God Without Being. Translated by Thomas A. Carlson. Chicago:
University of Chicago.
Moyle, Tristan. 2005. Heidegger’s Transcendental Aesthetic: An Interpretation of Ereignis.
Ashgate Publishing.
Smith, James K. A. 1999. “Liberating Religion from Theology: Marion and Heidegger on the
Possibility of a Phenomenology of Religion.” In International Journal for Philosophy of
Religion (46).