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In this article, Jean-Yves Lacoste lays out the central moments of Heidegger’s complicated relationship to Christian thinking, from his earliest studies under Carl Braig up to his death in 1976. With careful attention to personal letters, scholarly reviews, conferences, as well as major texts, Lacoste shows that this influence was mostly in one direction: despite the eagerness of theology to engage with Heidegger, Heidegger continually demonstrated reticence to approach theology except strictly on his own terms. The article closes with a retrospective evaluation of the central themes of the original Heidegger et la Question de Dieu volume, which took up this investigation in France in 1979. Despite the fact that its publication predated many of Heidegger’s essential texts on this theme, these essays, in Lacoste’s estimation, remain a “perfectly timeless” resource for those seeking to understand the place of God within phenomenology.

Husserl understood “reduction” as the method with which scientific philosophy achieved a more exact description of things by bracketing out the question of their real existence. To this the chapter replies that even in the “natural attitude” there is reduction; perception is always concerned with the essence of phenomena, not with their existence. Yet there are some phenomena that are not susceptible of description by reduction, since agnosticism about their existence would falsify the appearance. Other people appear irreducibly, and so does speech itself. If we are to claim that God appears, we must assert that his appearance, too, is irreducible.

The chapter distinguishes two experiences often conflated in discussion of anticipation, a commonplace pre-experience of the future accompanying every appearance, and an experience of promise that gives ground for a hope. In “enjoyment” present experience takes possession of consciousness and prevents real anticipation; but enjoyment is intermittent, and when it is gone there can be a fidelity to the experience, born of desire for permanence, and a sense of absence, which may convey the thought of a reappearance. Presence cannot be “parousia.” Anticipation is lived out in unfulfilment. But the idea of conclusive experience is not ruled out, and may have a critical role in exposing incomplete experience. We may receive anticipations of what cannot be given definitively within world-time, and “the” end may be the only key we have to the status of nearer ends.

Kierkegaard purports to demolish the philosophical “system” in favour of the “fragment,” but the theme of his ‘fragments’ is the theological one of salvation. The chapter argues that this work is not a theological critique of philosophy, but lays claim to a place within philosophy for a non-Socratic relation of disciple to teacher. The disciple of the “god in time” relates to the teacher in love, yet love opens the way to knowledge. The goal of philosophy is to place us in the truth, but truth is predicated only on existence, and salvation is existence in the truth. There is no general theory of love or knowledge, but a “theological reduction” of those concepts to the relation of man to God.

The lack of interest in love and God in Heidegger’s Being and Time is curiously suspended in a footnote that quotes Augustine and Pascal on love and the knowledge of the divine in the course of the presentation of the important concept of “affection.” Heidegger confines interest in God to the care of a positive historical theology, and so marginalizes both faith and God at the edge of existence, which is philosophy’s proper concern. But this strategy ignores the way in which anticipatory understanding of being can converge with interest in God in human existence. Love of divine things can be interpreted in terms of Heidegger’s “care,” while his “affection” can accommodate self-discovery not only in-theworld but before-God.

Considering the distinction between discursive, acquired knowledge and intuitive knowledge raises the question of how theology as a learned discipline relates to the spiritual life. The two kinds of knowledge cannot exist apart in history, but may be in unhappy tension. Eschatology can have no place for discursive knowledge, while history may be conceived as veiling of intuitive knowledge behind discursive knowledge. The goal of theology, then, is to introduce the believer into intuitive knowledge of God. “Indirect” communication allows it to speak of God without reductively “objectifying” him. The experience of worship combines the two kinds of knowledge. It involves words, and the words aim at truth. But its function is to allow the truth not merely to be understood but to be felt in its splendour.

The nine essays in The Appearing of God are situated on the fluid border of philosophy and theology, and follow a path leading from classic modern philosophical discussions of experience to some leading themes in contemporary phenomenology. After an introductory exploration of Kierkegaard’s classic text that straddles the border between philosophy and theology, the reader is introduced to Husserl’s account of perception, with its demonstration that the field of phenomena is wider than that of perceptible entities, allowing phenomena that give themselves primarily to feeling. Husserl’s theory of reduction is then subjected to a critique, which identifies phenomena wholly resistant to reduction. John Paul II’s encyclical on Faith and Reason elicits a critical rejection of its attempt to reify the boundary between natural and supernatural, the author asserting in its place that love is the distinguishing mark of the knowledge of God. This theme is continued in a discussion of Heidegger’s Being and Time, where a passing reference to Pascal invites interrogation of the work’s “methodological atheism,” which is found to leave more room than appears for love of the divine. The next three chapters deal with the themes of Anticipation, Gift, and Self-Identity, all exploring aspects of a single theme, the relation of present experience to the passage of time, and especially to the future. The final chapter, which is also the most personal, draws the main themes of the book together in asking how theology as an intellectual enterprise relates to the practice of worship.

Giving and promise must be thought together. Being-in-the world entails being-with the other, who is both “given” and bearer of a gift promised. But any disclosure may be understood as a gift; it is not anthropomorphic to speak of “self-giving” with a wider reference than person-to-person disclosure. Which implies that no act of giving can exhaust itself in its gift. Present experience never brings closure to self-revealing. Yet giving is crystallized into “the given,” the closure of gift. “The given” is what it is, needing no gift-event to reveal it. But the given, too, is precarious, and can be destabilized when giving brings us face to face with something unfamiliar. Nothing appears without a promise of further appearances, and God himself can never be “given.”

Starting from Husserl’s account of perception, this chapter argues that every perceptual experience is fragmentary, so that the perception of any “thing” goes beyond the moment-by-moment appearances. The realm of phenomena is wider than that of perceptible entities; it includes values, numbers, etc., and some appearances that present themselves to feeling. God may appear in the realm of feeling, where love has priority over knowledge. Unclarity and incompleteness are essential to an experience that lays claim to the presence of the Absolute. That presence is not a “parousia”; its appearing is understood only in relation to its transcendence of appearance.

In this chapter, Jean-Yves Lacoste offers a theologically rich reading of the Sermon on the Mount, particularly the antitheses (Matt. 5:38-48), in which Jesus issues a series of seemingly impossible commands culminating in the order to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” Lacoste argues that the antitheses are speech-acts that exceed the Mosiac law without abrogating it, effectively calling Jesus’ audience to enact (and creating in them the ability to practice) the exact sort of extra-moral perfection that Jesus demands, in the context of both a world (kosmos) where such acts make little sense and a kingdom (Basileia) where they will no longer be necessary.

The article aims at providing a precise concept of the "object" as a being which appears in the field of perception without appearing to affection. Consequences follow: (a) what appears to us runs the perpetual danger of appearing only to perception, and therefore of being constituted as an object; (b) objectity belongs to most beings and is not the fruit of a constitution involving only our subjective causality; (c) what appears to us is also what we can reduce to its being ready-to-hand: technology and science begin where beings appear to us as objects; (d) the reality of objectity proves the partial legitimacy of metaphysics, and proves as well that no access to Being is possible except through the mediation of modes of being; (e) meanwhile, one has learnt to bypass the concept of "subject": only "quasi-subjects" are available in the realm of experience.

L'A. veut apporter sa contribution a la confrontation necessaire des raisons philosophique et theologique: la parole theologique se distingue de la parole philosophique en ce qu'elle est d'abord un dire presse, et cette parole ne beneficie de delais que pour s'acquitter dans l'histoire de tâches hermeneutiques hautement specifiques. L'attente eschatologique impose a la vie theologale de se vivre dans un rapport original au temps et a l'histoire, et elle l'impose egalement a la theologie: elle vit d'une urgence, et des delais lui sont pourtant concedes.

This study contributes two nuances to the theory of reduction proposed by Husserl in Ideen I. The theory, on the one hand, is that of work by specialists carried out for a purely philosophical purpose: to arrive at the best possible description of what things are — now we commonly encounter, leaving aside all philosophical interest, experiences, in which what things are distracts us, because they exist outside our consciousness: thus "spontaneous reduction". On the other hand, the theory affirms the universal primacy of the reduction: every phenomenon is suitable, and to its great epistemological benefit. Now, we also encounter phenomena that are properly indescribable if we do not integrate into their description the fact that they exist outside of consciousness — in short, realities such that their eidos implies their transcendent existence. (Transl. by J. Dudley)., Cette étude apporte deux nuances à la théorie de la réduction proposée par Husserl dans Ideen I. La théorie, d'une part, est celle d'un travail de spécialistes effectué à une fin seulement philosophique: parvenir à la meilleure description possible de ce que sont les choses — or, nous butons communément, hors de tout intérêt philosophique, sur des expériences dans lesquelles ce que les choses sont nous désintéresse du fait qu'elles existent hors de la conscience: "réduction spontanée", donc. D'autre part, la théorie affirme le primat universel de la réduction: tout phénomène s'y prête, et pour son grand bénéfice épistémologique. Or, nous butons aussi sur des phénomènes proprement indescriptibles si nous n'intégrons à leur description le fait qu'ils existent hors de la conscience — bref, des réalités telles que leur eidos implique leur existence transcendante., Lacoste Jean-YvesLacoste Jean-Yves. L'apparaître et l'irréductible. In: Revue Philosophique de Louvain. Quatrième série, tome 104, n°3, 2006. pp. 498-528.

Du monde conceptualise par Heidegger dans «Etre et temps» l'oeuvre d'art est absente. Interpreter cette absence exige d'abord que l'on s'interroge sur le statut du phenomene chez Heidegger et ensuite que l'on s'interroge sur le recours a loriginaire et a son lexique. L'A. tente de montrer que l'apparition de l'oeuvre d'art contrevient a la logique mondaine de la temporalisation, il suggere aussi que la vie de l'affect n'est peut-etre pas une vie seulement mondaine, et qu'au commencement n'est peut-etre pas la realite constituee du monde, mais sa possibilite. Il tente enfin de fournir les elements d'une interpretation du glissement qui conduisit Heidegger a introduire la terre dans son dispositif conceptuel

Cet article part d’un passage de la profession de foi du concile de Chalcedoine, ou l’on peut constater un certain decalage entre le « vouloir dire » et l’equivoque de l’effectivement « dit » dans le double emploi du mot homoousios applique au Christ, pour souligner la necessite d’une critique philosophique de l’usage theologique de tout concept. L’auteur prolonge son propos en analysant l’utilisation du concept de « transsubstantiation » en theologie eucharistique. En aidant le theologien a ajuster son dire a son vouloir dire, le philosophe se tient dans les marges de la theologie, mais a titre de spectateur interesse et son apport ne pourra avoir lieu que sous controle theologique – donc sous celui d’une theologie fondamentale. Si rigueur il doit y avoir en theologie et en philosophie, hermeneutique philosophique des textes theologiques et interpretation critique des textes philosophiques par le theologien ne sont pas une option mais un imperatif.

Notre vocabulaire dispose de deux mots : « foi » et « raison ». Et comme le pas est vite fait de l’existence des mots a l’existence des choses, la theorie commune nous dit, d’une part, que nous sommes doues de raison et, d’autre part, que la foi peut etre eveillee en nous, et qu’il s’agit la de deux modes de connaissance distincts (mais complementaires). Precisons. La theorie commune (qui, comme les theories communes, est une theorie recente…) fait d’abord fonds sur une affirmation aussi vieille que la philosophie, et qui est une affirmation philosophique : l’homme se definit specifiquement par le logos, lequel se dit ratio en latin ; d’ou « raison » et « rationalite ». En ses origines grecques et une fois devenue romaine, d’autre part, la rationalite est illimitee. Et de la sorte, une question ne se pose jamais : celle d’un acte de connaissance dans lequel l’homme excede sa definition d’« animal rationnel ». Cette question se posa toutefois lorsque la connaissance de Dieu et des choses divines en vint, en monde chretien, a etre consideree comme excedant les prises de la raison. Que peut alors exactement la raison?

A partir d’un « stock d’axiomes de toute theologie », J.-Y. Lacoste inscrit a son cahier des charges plusieurs tâches. La premiere consiste a montrer que « ses » verites ne sont pas celles de tout le monde. La seconde est celle d’une « precision conceptuelle (et plus, peut-etre...) » inscrite dans la distinction de l’experience et du langage par et dans lequel elle se dit. Enfin, comme troisieme tâche, il entend accomplir une « mise en perspective » ou « mise en critique », celle des instruments conceptuels utilises. De ce fait, devraient apparaitre les grandes lignes d’un protocole d’accord entre instances (philosophie/theologie, theorisation/contemplation, etc.), capable d’aider a eviter des ornieres assez habituelles, que ce soit celle de la sacralisation du Vorzeit (et de ses theories), ou celle du flirt perpetuel avec la nouveaute cherie comme telle. Ces tâches etant evidemment solidaires, il n’est pas question pour J.-Y. Lacoste de les separer dans son projet.

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