Reflections on "God Without Being" by Jean-Luc Marion

Marion’s first task is explaining the difference between an idol and an icon. Fundamentally, an idol is mirror image of the self. It is called into being by the self when the self conceptualizes it. Marion describes a gaze looking into transcendence; the gaze has an aim, and when the aim sees, the gaze is reflected back by an invisible mirror. “The first intention aims at the divine and the gaze strains itself to see the divine, to see it by taking it up into the field of the gazeable." Like an idol in the classical sense, the conceptual idol of the gaze is forged, though by the intentional ideas of the gazer rather than by masons and artists. The idol appears because the gaze has been stopped, because a visible object in the transcendence has come to be. Before the gaze stopped, it did not see the idol because it “transpierced” the idol, it found nothing upon which to lay its sight. When the visible emerges to the gaze, the gaze is filled, saturated because of its intention. The visible saturates the gaze by delimiting its scope, and thereby reflecting the gaze back upon itself: it is a visualization of the gazer, a mirror – though an invisible mirror, for the nature of the aim of the gaze is precisely that which must exhaust every aim. The idol is the only visible, the extent of the aim; it “admits no beyond, because the gaze cannot raise the sight of its aim."

The critique of metaphysics here is pointed and fearsome. Marion critiques the onto-theo-logical traditions by labeling them as idolatrous. The “God” of metaphysics is a conceptual idol, a visible mirror upon which a gaze has rested, investing the visible with concepts born out of the gaze. The idol, being a mirror, reflects the gazer’s limits. Thus, the metaphysical God is a causa sui, a prime mover, an unchanging form. This very much corresponds to Karl Barth’s Not-God, which is nothing more than “humanity writ large.” This conceptual idol called “God” is bound up in the necessary limits of Dasein, who believes in his experience of the divine in the idol because he is no longer capable of seeing (gazing) past the idol to the invisible. However, it is precisely the epochal character of Dasein that is returned by the idol, though Dasein is incapable of recognizing this due to his intentional gaze upon the divine. “The idol: less a false or untrue image of the divine than a real, limited, and indefinitely variable function of Dasein considered in its aiming at the divine." This conceptual “God” is precisely available for death, as Nietzsche discovers, for it is only a functional apparatus for investigation, formulization, and structuralizing of morals. “The ‘death of God’ presupposes a concept equivalent to that which it apprehends under the name of ‘God’." Thus, even in Nietzsche’s atheism is only the death of the “God” of metaphysics, the Not-God who is merely an idol reflecting the impositions of Dasein in his particular epoch. As for proving this Not-God’s existence, one need only appeal to the concepts that brought him forth in the first place; however, such proofs can be reversed, and this God can die. “Every proof, in fact, demonstrative as it may appear, can lead only to the concept…."

Following this attack on the metaphysical “moral God” and causa sui, Marion begins his examination of the even greater Not-God: the God who belongs to being. In this examination is a critique of Heidegger, though Heidegger himself seemed to realize the critique, but had no intention of answering such questions himself. The critique involves the primacy of being, which Heidegger introduces as the reversal of the metaphysical, philosophical, ontotheological traditions. Being, for Heidegger, is that from which all beings constitute themselves; humanity is Dasein, and as such its purpose is “to be” authentically. There is no ground of being, for it is the category by which all is made intelligible, speakable, etc. Since God, for Heidegger, is not to be equated with being, then it would seem that God has indeed died, and that there is no longer room in language to speak of the divine, since man speaks and thinks being and nothing else. Marion understands Heidegger’s necessary commentary on God as follows: “What is essential in the question of ‘the existence of God’ stems less from ‘God’ than from existence itself, therefore from Being… [The] truth on ‘God’ could never come but from where truth itself issues, namely from Being as such…." Thus, Marion asks the question of whether thinking of God is even possible, considering the infinitude of God and his non-relation to being. In this question it first appears as though the answer is that thought about the divine is entirely impossible, but what is possible is for theology to take as its purpose an analytic of Dasein as being-towards-God. Theology becomes a primarily anthropological task undertaking the liberation of God from being by associating with theology only what Dasein is capable of referencing. However, Marion recognizes the fundamental flaw such an idea poses: for theology to be an ontic examination of the faith of Dasein, it must, as the other ontic sciences must, place itself under the being of Dasein. If, therefore, Dasein takes aim at that which it cannot know or comprehend because it remains outside being, then the aim never leaves Dasein to begin with, and imposes an atheism upon Dasein’s theology, for “God” is nothing other than the invention of Dasein, and is therefore still subjugated to being.

What Marion proposes is the liberation of God from being, a task that must be accomplished without creating an idol that still finds itself either in the ontotheological tradition or the Heideggerian existential tradition. This God, says Marion, is revealed as absolute giving – pure, divine love. Of course, one should be quick to point out that love is a concept, but God’s love is revealed as agape. Such love stops all idolatry from issuing from it, “Because, as opposed to the concept that, by the very definition of apprehension, gathers what it comprehends, and, because of this, almost inevitably comes to completion in an idol, love… does not pretend to comprehend, since it does not mean at all to take…." Love cannot be a conceptual idol because it does not offer itself as something to be conceived (i.e. it does not receive the gaze), but something that ever-gives, transcending conceptual boundaries by reaching outwards. Of course, Marion is echoing Derrida’s notion of the gift, which must be given seemingly without intention of being given as a gift and without being received as a gift (except in retrospect); it must be the identification of the giver with the gift, which is precisely how Jesus fits Marion’s greater schema. Jesus, the giver and the gift, is the revelation of agape. He is the pure gift because he is the icon of the invisible God: an icon, as opposed to an idol, is the meeting of the visible and the invisible, the tension of their difference. It is not a visualization of what was once invisible, but the visualization of that which remains invisible – and invisible not because it is outside the aim, but because it cannot be brought into the aim of the gaze. Christ, first and foremost, is this icon, and in Christ mankind is remade as the icon. What the icon does is give itself, the visible of the invisible, which is the giving of Christ first as an icon (i.e. at the Incarnation), but envisaged most emphatically in his death.

Marion spends the latter sections of his work clarifying the various details of his premises. Most significant is his commentary on the Eucharist and its relationship to the “Christic event,” whereby humanity is always given agape. Of course, Marion’s commentary is built on the Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation, though his argumentation is only partially based on Catholic tradition. The real presence of Christ in the Eucharist first illustrates the a-temporality of the pure gift, but it is most important as the hermeneutic of Scripture. Marion’s example is the meeting of Jesus with the disciples on the road to Emmaus, wherein Jesus first interprets himself in Scripture, but the disciples do not recognize him until they break bread. The text of Scripture itself, when aimed at, cannot yield the icon. Only the substantial Christ in the paschal sacrifice provides the icon whereby the reader looks beyond the words to the Word. The agape-Christ in the paschal sacrifice yields the icon of the invisible agape-God revealed in Scripture.

Concerning ethics, the icon/idol interplay echoes the it/Thou contrast of Buber, and builds on Levinas’ foundation of the Other. The Other is an icon of the invisible God, like Christ, though less than Christ. The Eucharistic hermeneutic, therefore, indicates what agape does; it reveals God, and by revealing him it opens the icon to what it must do for it to be an icon. The summation of ethics is therefore in the Eucharist, which looks past the words to the Word, seeing him as invisible. A simplified form of this kind of ethics would be to ask the question, “What would Jesus do?” Of course, one must wonder if ethics is possible outside of Eucharistic theology, to which Marion might respond in the negative since such ethics would be outside agape. However, every time the Eucharistic sacrifice is imitated in life’s circumstances, even by non-Christians, the gift of agape is present. For non-Catholics, particularly Christians in the Reformed tradition with a strict understanding of election and atonement, such a linking of God and agape is heterodox due to its inevitable inclusivism (and potential universalism). Roman Catholics, however (as well as much of mainstream Protestantism), have no issues with these soteriological implications as they were formalized by Vatican II. Whether Marion understands soteriology to be the divine forming of an icon out of a human idol-unto-himself (i.e. every man under sin), or as something else, the doctrine of salvation and its relationship to God as agape remains dangerously elusive. It is possible that Marion simply assumes the Catholic sacramental position here, affirming the cleansing waters of Baptism as regenerative.

It is clear that Marion is challenging the entire Thomist tradition when he strikes out against the God that is. What Marion is not saying, however, is that God must not be, or that he is not, but only that such categories do not confine him. “God can choose that which is not as if it were," and vice-versa. The category by which beingness or non-beingness is defined is that of faith, rather than ontology. This category of faith is indifferent to being, because being is “delivered” by the gift (i.e. the pure gift, agape). Whether or not Marion accomplishes his goal of showing God to be free of categories, including being, is debatable, but the more important question is the relevance of Marion’s whole system outside of Catholic theology. Without his understanding of the Eucharist, there is no substantial sacrifice presented in the sacrament. Without the substantial sacrifice, the historical crucifixion does not transcend time and appear outside the confines of being. Christ himself, therefore, does not transcend being, but instead remains bound to a (former) present. How, then, can Christ be an icon if his agape has boundaries? Such a question is worth considering for Protestants who wish to see a God with power over being rather than bound by his own.

How is the Church to appropriate a theology such as Marion’s? Are not the foundational doctrines of Christianity – the Trinity and the Hypostatic Union – formulated precisely in post-Socratic metaphysical terms? Marion argues passionately against such an idea, attempting to free such doctrines from the metaphysical tradition he rejects, but what is potentially threatened by Marion’s ideas is not just these cornerstone doctrines, but the whole kerygmatic tradition of Christianity, the positions established in the ancient creeds. However, what Marion may have found is not a rejection of any of these things, but a light by which to view them, a light of agape rather than a light of being, but can the Church remain the Church without preferencing its creeds and doctrinal positions? Perhaps the question is whether such a Church of agape would be an idol or an icon?