On the Foundation of the Distinction Between Theology and Philosophy

Jean-Luc Marion
I. The Conflict of the Faculties
The question of philosophy and its academic teaching always leads to the question of the
freedom of research. Like every other discipline, philosophy can only unfold itself when it is
free; and even more so than any other discipline, because it does not have at its disposal, as is the
case for the other disciplines, an object determined by a method that would constitute it, but must
each time construct a path on which to walk. Moreover, philosophy is only taught and developed
in the context of institutions, particularly in universities. How then can such an institution allow,
tolerate, indeed guarantee such an unconditional freedom that is the condition of
everything? How can philosophy demand this without implicating the institution to which it
nevertheless claims to belong, and without entering into a conflict with the other
disciplines? This danger appears most clearly when philosophy enters into contactlike two
tectonic plateswith theology, which not only must accept a normative authority (that of the
revealed datum and, only then, that of the ecclesiastical magisterium), but can hardly avoid the
temptation (or the duty) of imposing its norms and results on the other disciplines, especially
philosophy. What Kant called the conflict of the faculties (between, on the one hand, theology,
law and medicine, and, on the other, philosophy) returns in fact to the foundation of the
universities which from the start provoked the conflict between the faculty of theology and the
faculty of the humanities, and spanned the entire history of the universities up until today: one of
the most decisive divisions among the university systems in the world today is between the
universities that still have a faculty of theology, and those that have done away with it. Of
course the conflict of the faculties is most obvious in the universities that have retained the two
faculties side-by-side, thus primarily in the Catholic universities. Which appear, paradoxically,
as the privileged site of the always-possible conflict between philosophy and theology.
The vulgar interpretation of this conflict comes to oppose a faculty of philosophy, which
would defend the rights of reason, or at least rationality, to a faculty of theology, which would
defend the rights of faith, or even of Revelation. With the variant that the battlefront could itself
exist within the faculty of theology, between the so-called scientific disciplines (exegesis,
Church history, etc.) and the speculative disciplines, or even inside the latter, between the
conservative and progressive positions, and so on. Following no less than the authority of Kant,
one can admit as a necessary evil that the conflict between the higher faculties [here
theology] and the lower faculty [philosophy] will, first of all, be inevitable [], but second it
will also be legal and even may never end, because the faculty of philosophy can never lay
down its arms when faced with the danger that threatens the truth whose protection has been
entrusted to it, because the superior faculties will never lay down their claim to be in
control.i One must recognize that, in most cases, and especially when it comes to "freedom of
research" in the Catholic universities, in the face of the authority of the magisterium, we reason
as Kantians of the strictest obedience.
Our intention here will not be to take sides in this conflict, nor even to attempt, after so
many others, a mediation. It will be to question the very terms of the conflictthe relation
between philosophy and theology: it could be, in effect, that the vagueness of the concepts, or
even the confusion of the definitions, not only prohibits all clarification of the obscurities, but in
fact constitutes the heart of the problem, such that no one knows exactly what one is defending

and against whom. Because the conflict of the faculties assumes that one first identifies who one
opposes, to then determine clearly the difference between disciplines. Now, this difference is
found most of the time and, at first glance, supposed to be known and presupposed without
ambiguity. We shall show that, on the contrary, it is no longer self-evident, because the
contemporary situation of philosophythat of the end of metaphysics and the radical
possibilities which it opens to thoughtiirenders problematic, or even obsolete, the criteria that
until now was used to rigorously distinguish theology and philosophy, and eventually to describe
the supposed conflict. It could be that with the effacement of the usual criteria of differentiation,
the conflict itself becomes obsolete and that an entirely other community emerges between them.
II. Brief Historical Remarks
Before any conceptual discussion, one should recall two historical facts that support the issue we
have just introduced.
It is first necessary to remember that Christian thought, when it had to expose, render
credible, and therefore conceptualize the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, did not resort to the
term theology. In effect, this term pertained to the theories of the divine put forth by the poets
and the first Greek thinkers, under the double danger of an indeterminate meaning of the gods
and of the divine, with which the designation of the unique and incommensurable God of the
biblical Revelation broke off completely; and then to a non-critical assumption of the possibility
of saying anything at all about God, not only the God of the Revelation but an inexpressible and
anonymous God as such, but who paradoxically exercises the function of and thus speaks
about himself, thereby imposing a theo-logy.iii It is only in this sense that Denys will reintroduce
the term when, using positive and negative theologies, he locates and rehearses the names that
God himself uses for his own purposes in the Scriptures (obviously in contrast to all of
Neoplatonism). It will be necessary to wait until Abelard, and even the constitution of theologia
as a science by Saint Thomas, for the term to find definitive acceptance in Christian usage. That
for twelve centuries, and precisely those where it forged its most decisive concepts, concepts we
still hold onto today, Christian thought ignored the term, which is to say it really had no need of
the term theologia, ought to indeed surprise usand warn us against the assurance that the
concept of theology was self-evident. How could the long absence of theologia in the history
of theology not continue to determine its contemporary status?
The reticence toward the term theologia, for example on the part of Saint Augustine,
leads us to another surprise if we examine the reasonsthat of the equivalence between theology
and philosophy. When he mentions what amounts to the minimalist definition: theologia,
quo verbo graeco significari intelligimus de divinitate rationem, sive sermonemtheology,
the Greek term that is intended to signify a reasoning or discourse on divinity,iv this does not yet
mean what the moderns will call theologia, in both senses, indeed antinomic, of the knowledge
[connaissance] of the Revelation, or of theologia rationalis as one of the parts of metaphysica
specialis, itself framed by metaphysica generalis (or ontologia),v but much less so. It only aims
at the use made of it by Varron: tria genera theologiae dicit esse, id est rationis quae de diis
explicatur, eorumque unum mythicon, alterum, physicon tertium civile.he says that there are
three genres of theology, i.e., reasons given that explain the gods, one mythical, another physical
(those of the philosophers who speak of the celestial movements), and the third political,vi in
other words, the theologia of the poets who tell stories about the gods, those of the

philosophi who study the movements of the stars, and those of the priests who celebrate the cult
of the city.vii Saint Augustine refuses to be the theologian of either of the first two theologiae,
that of the poets (whose ridiculous and immoral fables slander divinity), and that of the city
(purely political, because reflecting its ideological pretenses). It remains therefore to consider
...theologia rationalis, quae non huic tantum [viz. Varron], sed multis philosophic placuit.
rational theology, which suits not only Varron, but any number of philosophers.viii The
reason for this is that this part of philosophy, physics, or more exactly cosmologywhich
defines what in nature, or better, in the regular movements of the heavensapproaches closest to
the immutability of the divine. And since philosophers alone achieve this narrow yet true
rationality, Christian thought (what we today call theology) can only discuss with the
philosophers, never with the other theologies of the pagans, for lack of rationality: non
cum quislibet homnibus [], sed cum philosophis est habenda conlatio.the confrontation
must not take place with just anybody [], but with the philosophers.ix Hence, in the strict
sense, which is to say in the sense he himself understood it, Saint Augustine is in no way, or only
marginally, doing the work of a theologian: strictly, he may admit to doing the work of a
philosopher, in the strict sense of amator Dei, just as he concludes the discussion: verus
philosophus est amator Dei.x Clearly, this meaning of philosophy has nothing, or very little, in
common with the contemporary use of the term. But it remains nonetheless a fact that has
persisted for as long as philosophia Christiana was used to designate the monastic life and, more
generally, the properly Christian life (i.e., at the very least, until Erasmus).xi So not only
does theologia not always define the practice of thinking the Revelation, but philosophia can be
substituted for it, in virtue of its obvious meaning of the love of wisdom, thus of the author and
place of wisdom. In this context, the conflict of the faculties is no more obvious than the
definition of the antagonistic faculties.
Reciprocally, the antagonism between theologia and philosophia supposes that a rivalry
can oppose them, a rivalry that in turn implies a common ground of confrontation. Historically
these conditions did not exist before the circumstances of thought led Saint Thomas Aquinas to
make two inspired but quite distinctive decisions. First, to express under under the title of
metaphysica three sciences that remained unarticulated by Aristotle: first, prima philosophia,
which concerns the first causes of things (and thus, in the end, God); next, metaphysica in the
limited sense, which considers the ens and that which follows from it; and finally scientia
divina sive theologia, which considers separate substances (above all, God).xii These three
sciences will end up under a fixed form from Suarez to Kant (and beyond), under the title of the
system of metaphysics: metaphysica treated first as metaphysica generalis, then under the late
banner of ontologia, the ens in quantum ens, the prima philosophia which unfolds in a triple
metaphysica specialis that includes (alongside cosmologia rationalis and psychologia rationalis)
what then becomes theologia rationalis.xiii This discipline amounts to a discussion about God,
whatever he may be, by means of pure reason, which is to say by eventually demonstrating his
existence (through proofs) and defining his essence (through attributes). It is only in this context
that philosophy allows God into its domain, that is, into the system of metaphysics. Without the
construction of such a system, God, in particular the God of the Revelation, would escape from
philosophywhich does not even mean that with this system he becomes accessible to it as
such. No one understood and emphasized this better than Saint Thomas, since he distinguishes
as clearly as possible two meanings of theologia (Sic igitur theologia, sive scientia divina,
duplex). On the one hand, the theology" developed by the philosophers, so-called metaphysics:
its proper objects of study are divine things, but exclusively as the principles of their knowledge,

not themselves as the objects of this knowledge (res divinas non tanquam subjectum
scientiae, sed tanquam principium subjecti): the Revelation remains at the origin of their study,
without their managing, through pure reason, to reach it as a direct object of their study. On the
other hand, and by contrast, divine things in themselves only become a direct object of study by a
belief which has access in faith to the Scriptures themselves as the direct object of understanding
[la comprhension]: Alia vero [theologia] quae ipsas res divinas considerat propter seipsas ut
subjectum scientiae, et haec est theologia, quae sacra Scriptura dicitur.xiv Thus one ought to
distinguish and surely oppose two theologies: theologia philosophica, related indirectly to the
revealed God (as a principle of its object), now destined to be integrated as theologia rationalis
into the system of metaphysics, is set against the theologia vero sacrae Scripturae, which is
directly linked to the God of the Revelation (as its object), from now on at a distance from the
entire system of metaphysics. In this context, and this context alone, can the two instances be
distinguished, opposed, and possibly confront each other. This rapidly became the case with the
Reformation. It was not the case before the medieval, and primarily Thomistic, inauguration of
Christian thought (as a non-theology) in the first centuries and the patristic period, which ignored
the splitting in two of two theologiae, whose stakes were supposedly the same.
The issue of the distinction between these two knowledges [savoirs] of God has a
history, is not eternal and, therefore, is not self-evident.
III. The Criteria of Distinction From Philosophys Point of View
It is a conceptual issue: which criteria do we have at our disposal to distinguish (and perhaps
oppose) what we today call philosophy and theology? We will attempt to examine them by first
adopting the perspective of philosophy, which is only fitting in a colloquium organized by
several faculties of philosophy.
A first criterion results directly from the establishment of the system of metaphysics:
every science depends on the metaphysica generalis, i.e., ontologia, insofar as it studies an
object that must first obviously be, a being [tant], ens. This requirement holds as well for each
of the specialized metaphysics, and so above all for the God of the theologia rationalis; thereby
approaching it first with respect to his existence (and the proofs of his existence), then with
respect to his essence. But this requirement also extends to what the theologia sacrae
Scripturae could claim to say in its own way: that the events of the biblical story must exist
[soient]: that they have been validated by the demands of historical science, or they have been
attested to in the texts according to the rules of philology (the literal meaning always prevailing,
etc.). We will subordinate, then, the two theologies to ontology, the difference being mainly the
degree of recourse to the positivity of the beings [des tants] concerned, and so to the empiricity
of the ontic verifications. In fact, this differentiation by subordination, although derived directly
from the system of metaphysics, outlives it by prolonging its effects in multiple ways. Without
following Schelling and evoking the positivity of the Revelation, we find it almost identical in
Heidegger who, in 1928, still considers theology (non-philosophical theology as well) as an
entirely autonomous ontic science by virtue of its positivity, and as such dependent on the
analytic of Dasein, which, as fundamental ontology, all the more assumes the primacy of
ontologia.xv We could also suggest that the entire demythologization carried out by Bultmann
rests on the subordination of theology, even and above all revealed, to a narrowly determined
modern rationality (in fact, technology), constructed as a non-critical replacement for

ontologia. This hardly differs from the contemporary assumptions of Carnap, who assumes the
logical critique of language as a quasi ontologia (which is curiously supposed to get rid of what
he imagines under the name of metaphysics). Every attempt carried out since then to rectify
theology in the name of the supposed authority of each of the defunct human sciences
(linguistics, psychoanalysis, sociology, literary theory, gender studies, etc.) essentially confine
themselves to reproducing the same tactic, with only weaker and less critical substitutes
for ontologia.
This criterion of distinction by subordination has been exercised so often that one would
not know to contest its power. Yet this power rests on a serious, and thus fragile, presupposition:
the distinction between ontological and ontic sciences clearly supposes an incontestable
ontologia, or at least a credible manifestation of the ens in quantum ens. Consequently, one can
seriously doubt whether one will find today a philosophy that can lay claim to the status of
ontology, to the universal of science of being. Without doubt, we lack no pretense to control or
restore ontologyparticularly in the analytic and neo-Thomistic traditionsbut without a
redefinition of the being [ltant] (supposing that we can surpass the irreducible undefinability in
metaphysics, from Duns Scotus to Hegel), without being able to break the contradiction of
reducing it to a cogitabile, nor to master the primacy of the concept in the conceptus entis. If
Heidegger himself had to renounce the maintenance of ontology, even under the figure of
Fundamentalontologie, if he finished by not only abandoning every use of metaphysica,
precisely to think being without being [ltre sans ltant], which signifies thinking being
[ltre] without consideration of metaphysics,xvi if he even in a sense abandoned being [ltre]
to the benefit of Ereignis in which it disappears,xvii which philosopher today can still truly lay
claim to ontology, sufficiently enough to subordinate to it the theology of the Revelation, or even
to philosophical theology, if there remains such a thing? Rephrasing the question, an ontology
(and therefore its primacy over every ontic science) only has meaning in a metaphysical
system: what remains of it at the end of metaphysics? If our thinking finds itself from now on
in a non-metaphysical situation, can it and must it claim an ontological criterion in order to
distinguish philosophy from a theology of the Revelation?
But we find another argument opposing their distinction by contrasting the ontological
and the ontic: it is not self-evident that the theologia sive sacra Scripturae remains a purely and
simply ontic science, under the pretext that it only deals with positive historical events. First,
because the phenomenology of the event that contemporary thought is only beginning to
seriously contemplate, while metaphysics has hidden it under the cover of an ontology of the
object, no doubt leads beyond (or at least elsewhere and besides) the being [ltant] taken in its
concept: the event does not only render effective in existence an already conceived essence, but
effectively accomplishes what no essence allowed one to foresee, so as to impose on and against
the conceivable possible (metaphysics) an inconceivable impossible, at least before the advent of
what comes [avant lavnement de ladvenant]; in this sense it opens the place of new
possibilities as long as it remains inconceivable and thus metaphysically impossible. In fact,
each event redefines the possibles of the being [ltant] in its being [ltre], and in this sense it
exercises a function more inaugural than ontic, indeed one tangentially ontological. It follows
that the more a phenomenon takes place in the mode of an appearance of the event, the more it
emends and critiques the metaphysical mode of being, in itself and for the beings it renders
possible by its own effective impossibility. But the biblical Revelation is concerned, precisely,
with impossible events, whose effectivity nevertheless testifies to the fact that nothing is
impossible for God (Genesis 18:14; Luke 1:37). In particular, the events of the creation of the

world and the resurrection of the flesh contradict both the possibility as non-contradictory
conceivability for a finite mind (in the metaphysical sense), and the identity of the being with
itself (according to the principle of contradiction), which is to say that they challenge ontology
and its definition of the being [ltant] as such. What is more, creation and resurrection consist
precisely in not respecting the laws of ontologia, since they allow what is not, precisely, to be,
hence that which is not identical to itself and whose existence contradicts its essence, or that
essence which contradicts itself, since in effect and in fact each time God calleth those things
which are not as if they were, (Romans 4:17).xviii In this sense,
the events par excellence that the creation and resurrection accomplish take on an ontological
status, or rather a metaontological status, in that they contradict the laws of ontologia, for
themselves and for all other beings as well (since they modify the latter by definition). Indeed,
once they are attested to the indifference of God to human (and thus metaphysical) delimitation
of the possible and the impossible, and thus to the rules of ontologia, all that is (the world) is
reinterpreted according to that which gives being, even against the intra-worldly determinations
of the being of the being [ltre de ltant], since it receives being [tre] from an instance which
exceeds every merely ontological determination of the being [ltant]. Created or re-created, the
being [ltant] is above all a gift of God and no longer only of the laws assigned to being by the
thought of ontologia. With this inversion of the relationship between ontologia and the possible,
the distinction between the theology of the Revelation and the philosophy of metaphysics is
inverted, and henceforth the former determines the latter.
By invalidating the ontological criteria of distinction between what we today call
philosophy and theology, we have already called into question another criterion, that of the
difference between the possible and the impossible (and thus between what can and cannot be
experienced). Be it the distinction between the potentia ordinata and the potentia extraordinaria
of God, between the laws of order and miracles or between sensible and intellectual
intuition, this division always presupposes that one can determine a priori the limits of
rationality. This supposes in turn the finitude of rationality, constructed as a condition of
possibility (and impossibility): precisely by a Copernican reversal, finitude, as a fact of reason,
comes to determine (for Kant) the infinite (and not the inverse, as for Descartes), rendering it
impossible for us, i.e., absolutely by law. That finitude defines the limits of the possible and the
impossible supposes that it has the quality of fixing the conditions of possibility of beings
conceived as its objectsin other words, finitude assumes a transcendental function a priori. If
finitude does not have a transcendental rank, it no longer has the right to fix (surely a priori) the
limit between the possible and the impossible. Hence, this limit can only differentiate what we
now call philosophy and theology by keeping philosophy itself in a transcendental situation, that
is to say, by assuming a transcendental I and an equally transcendental idealism. This position
remains tenable. At least Husserl held it, as did, in a sense, Heidegger in Sein und Zeit. But
which other philosophy, including and above all those which today most noisily challenge the
theoretical legitimacy of theology, can and would still pay the price of a distinction founded
upon the transcendental function of finite subjectivity? Not only does the distinction between the
possible and the impossible find itself challenged by the theology of the Revelation, according to
the principle that for God, nothing is impossible,xix but it is possible that philosophy itself can
no longer warrant its usage, when no subjectivity can ensure its transcendental function.
The end of metaphysics is not a slogan, nor an optional hypothesis, because it
prevents us from upholding the arguments that alone secure the theses of metaphysics: without
ontologia and without the transcendental status of the I, what we mean by philosophy today can

no longer distinguish itself from what philosophy means by theology, following the distinction of
the ontological and the ontic, or the possible and the impossible.
IV. The Criteria of Distinction From Theologys Point of View
If philosophy can no longer today formulate from its own point of view its difference from what
it calls theology, we must ask theology if it can formulate this difference from its perspective.
It would seem that one could privilege the opposition formulated perfectly by Duns
Scotus, in the name of many other theologians, medieval as well as modern: On this matter,
there seems to be a controversy between philosophers and theologians. And the philosophers
acknowledge the perfection of nature, but deny supernatural perfection, whereas the theologians
know the defect of nature and recognize the necessity of nature and supernatural
perfection.xx Against the letter of meta-physics (as a transphysica), but according to its
concept, philosophy constituted as a system of metaphysics would therefore treat all beings,
insofar as it admits a nature, leaving to theology the consideration, if there is one, of what has no
nature or exceeds it. This distinction may seem relatively clear, when one sticks to the problem
that, for the most part, created it: the opposition between the natural beatitude of man (that of the
sage through contemplation, exemplified in Nicomachean Ethics X) and the divine beatitude or
vision of God, evidently beyond the natural forces of man. Yet it quickly becomes problematic
as soon as one states the principle which supports it: nature never does anything in vain, nothing
can desire what it is unable to attain through its own power. This thesis, Aristotelian in origin,
can perhaps be verified for the things of the world, at least for those for which a quidditative
definition remains thinkable or possible following a strict but it becomes problematic
for things (beings or, more radically, creatures) whose quiddatitive definition remains
inconceivable because it does not radically remain by or in itself. But this appears to be the case
par excellence for man who, created in the image of God, bears his resemblance and similitude,
up to and including the incomprehensibility that is proper to God. Man, in order to remain
himself, must remain indefinable, because he bears by way of his essence the image of the
indefinable God.xxi The impossibility and illegitimacy of defining human nature permits, in the
case of its desire for beatitude or desire to see God, a natural desire of a supernatural good; as a
consequence of the paradox, it even demands that mans very nature is to exceed that nature in
virtue of the substitution in him of the image of God for the lower essence, rendering it useless
and replacing it. Saint Thomas Aquinas has perfectly formulated this paradox: A nature, which
is able to reach a perfect good, even though it may need external help to reach it, is nobler than a
nature that cannot reach a perfect good, but only some imperfect good, even if it reaches it
without any external help.xxii The distinction between nature and supernatural suffers at the least
one exception, that of the nature (supernatural from the start) of man himself. Cajetans decision
regarding the supernatural character (no longer natural) of the desire for God, henceforth reduced
to a so-called obediential power, will subsequently define the terms of the debate de auxiliis, a
quarrel without solution or legitimacy because it unquestioningly maintains a distinction that is
perhaps valid for all things, but precisely not for the most important thing that theology (aptly
named at this moment) must take into consideration. But even if this distinction governed
theology for many years, from the Reformation and the seventeenth century, the scholastic or
dogmatic was no longer one of the three theologies, as opposed to the positive and the mystical
(or spiritual).xxiii And today it seems clear that the renewal of Christian theology (particularly

Catholic theology) owes the majority of its results to the latter two theologies, the first remaining
creative thanks to the incessant threat of a return of the neo-Thomisms to Saint Thomas, who
retrospectively appears directly in line with the Fathers, especially Saint Augustine.
Theology remains what it ought to bea comprehension of the world as creation and of
man as an image of God, based on the Revelation of God in Jesus Christby developing a
discourse where precisely nature is never separated from the supernatural, because the gift of
grace precedes all things, being [ltre], essences, nature, freedom, etc. Immediately these
rightly constitute the gifts of grace, prior to defining themselves as autonomous natures in puris
naturalibus. In revealed theology, nature reveals itself as always already natured, never pure,
and natured by a naturing nature itself originally super-natural.xxiv Not only can theology not
distinguish itself as the knowledge [la connaissance] of the supernatural against philosophy, as
the knowledge of nature and the natural, because neither what we today call philosophy nor
theology can define a precise concept of nature in opposition to a concept of the supernatural, but
such a dichotomy would take away from theology all of its seriousness and specificity.
A remark must be made here. De facto, contemporary philosophy is not only
characterize by its critique of the diverse meanings of the supernatural (abandoned under the title
of Hinterwelt since Nietzsche), but also and in full coherence through its abandoning of the
concept of nature. Abandoning, or incapable of defining it, now that the ontic-ontological
foundation of the metaphysica generalis has also, and more importantly, given way to the
completely unspecified univocity of objectivity. Strangely, only some theologians remain to
defend, without any more arguments, the concept of nature, sometimes only to maintain the
survival of the supernatural. This impotence, as such, is not serious, since it is not the role of
theology to define or re-define an intrinsically philosophical concept. But this excusable
inability conceals the tasks proper to revealed theology, tasks that philosophy cannot and never
will accomplish as such.
V. The Common Indecision
Let us summarize the provisionally negative result that we have reached in these analyses. First,
the distinction between theology and philosophy is nothing original, but part of a late historical
conjunction, with no immediate necessity. This is confirmed, on the one hand, by their marginal
role (if not their absence) during the first twelve centuries of Christian thought, and on the other,
by the difficulty and complexity of their implementation in the thirteenth century. Second,
philosophy could only distinguish itself conceptually from what what then called theology by
assuming the fundamental decisions of the system of metaphysics: ontologia as metaphysica
generalis, theologia as simply one of the metaphysicae speciales, the determination of the
possible and the impossible in terms of the finitude of the I, from that point on taken as
transcendental. Third, the sharper attempt of modern theology to delimit its proper territory
within the metaphysical turn of philosophy, namely the distinction of nature and the supernatural
(from Cajetan to transcendental Thomism), which dangerously compromises the naturally
supernatural character of the nature of man, just as metaphysics ignored in principle the
originally created, i.e., given character of what it restrictively named ontologia. Fourth, what we
today call philosophy is no longer able (and in fact no longer pretends) to assume the decisions
of metaphysics and therefore cannot conceptually justify its right to exclude what it calls
theology from the field of rationality. Reciprocally, what we today call theology can no longer

invoke the distinction between nature and the supernatural to define its specificity in relation to
philosophy, but proceeds according to other criteria which are, in fact, empirical and historical,
and do not relate in the slightest to the contemporary state of philosophy. Hence there follows a
provisional result: the debates over the relationship between the disciplines of theology and
philosophy, and consequently over the conflict of their respective faculties, and finally over the
balance (or contradiction) between what is commonly called the freedom of research, etc., and
fidelity to the deposit of the faith, the magisterium, etc., and all the hidden tensions which, for
more than two centuries, have not ceased to jeopardize the work of Christian thought, indivisible
in all of its disciplinesthese debates, then, no longer have a conceptual justification. They
certainly still disturb contemporary research, but on the basis of an opposition that has vanished
for want of armed combatants, since the beginning of the period of the end of
metaphysics. The issue is only a matter of the dim light of stars already extinguished.
In this common and indecisive indetermination, we find a remarkable sign in the
abandoning of their claim to the status of science by what we today call philosophy and
theology. Philosophy, from the outset confronted by the paradigmatic scientificity of
mathematics (Plato), has always tried, despite long reticence (Aristotle, the new Academy,
Thomas Aquinas, etc.), to form a system with the sciences in metaphysica, then to reach and
surpass certitude (Descartes), and even to define itself directly as a Wissenschaft (Hegel), a
Wissenschaftslehre (Ficthe, Bolzano), as a banal Erkenntnistheorie (neo-Kantianism), and finally
as a "rigorous science" (Philosophie als strenge Wissenschaft, Husserl). The obsessive prestige
of the paradigm of science has gone so far that Carnap and the Vienna Circle could only
conceive of the so-called surpassing of metaphysics through recourse to a science, it was only
that, approximately, of the analysis of language (Uberwindung der Metaphysik durch logische
Analyse der Sprache). But the conditions to justify this scientificity always end up, consciously
or implicitly, demanding nothing less than a transcendental position, and hence recognizing an
essentially finite a priori. Without doubt, no figure of contemporary philosophy today assumes
this any longer, at least in the sense that metaphysics has never hesitated to lay claim to it.
But it so happens that what we now call theology only imposed itself as theologia of the
Revelation by resistance to and imitation of both philosophy and what was to become theologia
rationalis, by claiming the title of science (evidently rigorous), thus accomplishing what one
great historian has called the most sensational episode of the entry of Aristotle into
Christendom.xxv This claim did not take as a paradigm the certitude and evidence of
mathematics, however, but was modeled on the decisions of Aristotle, the model of logical
formality and hierarchical system of sciences. To the recurring issue of knowing how to
establish the scientificity of the Christian faith, whose material (Revelation, Scriptures of the
tradition, etc.) is not immediately given in experience of the world, but rather indirectly through
faith, Saint Thomas proposes to respond by the subalternation of the sciences, or more exactly,
by a quasi-subalternation:xxvi just like mathematics establishes its truths as principles for
physics (geometry for perspective, or astronomy, arithmetic for music, etc.), in the same way,
theologia, because the habitus fidei is quasi like a habitus of principles, takes its principles from
faith (which receives the Revelation, the Scriptures of the tradition, etc.) by a quasisubalternation and therefore formally satisfies the criteria of scientificity.xxvii The development
of contemporary theology, as much in the revival of Thomist studies as in the reappropriation of
the Fathers, as well as in the dialectical, kerygmatic, or indeed the aesthetic or dramatic
theologies (and even theological in the sense of the last panel of H.U. von Balthasars triptych)
displays itself entirely, one can reasonably argue, on the basis of an overcoming of the ambition

to subject Christian thought of the Revelation, whatever it may be, to the paradigm of science,
whatever it may be. And this for an essential reason: contemporary rationality, dominated by the
end of metaphysics, no longer has at its disposal a universal concept of science, even and
above all in the most fundamental [fondamentales] scientific disciplines. The crisis of
foundations [fondements], characteristic of the advance of physics and quantum physics, has
even been rendered possible by the renunciation of all unification of knowledge [savoir] on the
basis of [sur le fondement de] principles that are univocal and compatible between them. It is
widely acknowledged that what we today call theology confirms this state of affairs and,
consequently, definitively gives up driving out, into the latest philosophical fashion or into the
human sciences, a final and illusory paradigm that is supposedly scientific, which it conforms
to at any price (even at the price of losing the slightest access to the Revelation).
And yet, Thomas Aquinass attempt to confer a scientific status upon theology receives,
on a more attentive reading, the indication which would perhaps allow it to traverse this
aporia. In effect, the principles that the habitus fidei could attribute to the sacra doctrina as
scientific theology come from the [quasi] scientia superior, recently having come from and
bestowed by God and the Saints (quae scilicet est scientia Dei et beatorum).xxviii Hence it is
a matter of principles, if you like, but of principles given in a knowledge [connaissance] of
experience, given in an empirie that is not immediate, not universally available, not a priori, but
from an enigmatic a posteriori, nevertheless effectively given. The eventbeing that it is one
of the Revelation, by giving this absolutely unforeseeable experience, in an absolutely impossible
sense according to the criteria of metaphysical scientificity (without horizon, without the
transcendental I, without repetition, without foreseeability, without quidditative definition, and
thus without objectivity), paradoxically opens a space of new knowledges [connaissances], a
phenomenal field that would otherwise remain invisible. And so it gives the possibility
(metaphysically impossible) of a comprehension, which is to say it offers an extension of the
domain of rationality. As always, the extension of the domain of the struggles frees theory, even
theological theory. The only question, for a theology conscious of its origin and therefore of its
originality, will be to comprehend how the new given of the Revelation can display itself in a
rationality that responds to it. And this extension of the given also constitutes, for every
philosophy that wishes to overcome one day (if it ever can) the end of metaphysics, the most
serious challenge, but the only one capable of saving it. And then one will be able to make out
how only a god can save us now.
VI. Knowing in Order to Love, Loving in Order to Know
The criterion which remains between what we now name philosophy and theology does not
depend, or more exactly no longer depends, on the delimitations imposed by metaphysics on the
field of the thinkable (and thus on the experiencable), but rather on a caesura which introduces
there, on the initiative of God, the Revelation: the distinction concerning the revealed and the
non-revealed, the kerygma received, and the wisdom (or knowledge [le savoir])
constructed: Living is, in effect, the of God, effective and sharper () than any
double-edged sword; it penetrates as far as the division of the soul and the spirit [lesprit], as far
as the joints and marrow, dividing with its critique the intentions and thoughts of the heart
( ) (Hebrews 4:12). Literally the Word, and thus reason,
makes a division, establishing a critical criterion to distinguish, among the thoughts and

conceptions of men, those which come from God. Had this criterion literally fallen from heaven,
one inevitably would object: it already supposes the fact of the Revelation (i.e., it uses as
evidence [fasse foi] the tradition which we transmit in biblical texts), and therefore it only makes
sense for believers, thus supposing the difficultys resolution before it has even been examined
theology distinguishes itself from philosophy if one admits right away the fact that it finds a
specific given in the theology of the Revelation. But it is precisely here a matter of what the
criterion implies: it depends on each thinker deciding what he will accept as being given to him,
and so it depends on deciding oneself before the , on deciding whether or not to
add a given to the field of the thinkable and experiencable. Theology begins when thought
considers the revealed given as a phenomenal given, by right equal to every other, by deciding to
satisfy particularly epistemological procedures which it nevertheless requires for its reception.
These conditions can be formulated in a number of ways, but they always come back to
the same reversal, from the interpretation of Isaiah 7:9 (according to the Vetus Latina) that Saint
Augustine never ceased to ponder: Nisi credideritis, non intelligetis. To understand the
revealed given as an equally reasonable given (and hence to integrate it into the univocal and
universal rationality), one must (contrary to the procedures common to the other knowledges
[savoirs]) begin by believing itaccepting it, validating it, assuming it as given. In a sense, the
quasi-subalternation of theologia in the scientia beatorum of Saint Thomas, is inscribed in this
line. This is true, moreover, in certain of his predecessors, when they reverse the conjunction
between reason and belief: From Aristotle, the argument is that reason [connaissant] knows
that a doubtful thing is a product of belief, but from Christ the argument is that belief is a product
of reason.xxix It took Pascal to place in plain sight the original radicality of this reversal by
rediscovering a formula of Saint Augustine (Non intratur in veritatem, nisi per caritatem.One
only enters the truth through charity)xxx and commenting on it perfectly: And hence instead of
speaking of human things, it is said that one must know them before one loves them, what has
happened by proverb, the Saints on the contrary say by speaking of divine things it is necessary
to love them and that one only enters into the truth by charity, which they have made one of their
more useful maxims.xxxi Pascal even makes of it a universal epistemological rule: Truth is so
obscure in these times and falsehood so established that unless one loves the truth, one cannot
know it.xxxii And thus to pretend to know God such as he reveals himself without love amounts
to not knowing the truth, to not even seeing it: knowledge of God is very far from the love of
him.xxxiii Reciprocally, if love prevails among the three theological virtues (1 Corinthians,
13:13), and as truth is only discovered, in the last instance, here as love, then obviously one can
maintain the paradox that the greatest of Christian virtues is the love of truth.xxxiv These
formulas, which make a system, respond directly to those of Saint Augustine: Volo eam [viz.
veritatem] facere in corde meo coram te in confessioneI desire to make truth in my heart,
before You, by confession (Confessions X, 1,1,14,140). This same epistemological role of love
toward truth can also be described negatively, in the direction of hatred, which resists the
repercussion, accordingly more accusatory, of truth: it [viz. self-esteem] conceives a mortal
hatred against this truth which reprimands it and which convinces it of its faults. And it would
desire to annihilate it, and, not being able to destroy it in itself, it destroys it as much as it can in
its knowledge and in that of others; which is to say it places all of its attention in hiding its faults
from others and itself and it can only suffer those that others point out to it, only what they show
it. [] Because is it not true that we hate the truth and those who tell us it, and that we love that
they are deceived to our own advantage? [] To tell the truth is useful to those to whom it is
spoken, but disadvantageous to those who tell it because it causes them to be hated.xxxv Here it

is obviously a matter of a literal commentary on Confessions X, 23, 34, which while successively
correcting the veritas redarguens, the nolunt convinci quod falsi sunt, the oderunt eam, and the
initial citation veritas parit odium. In other words, for Pascal as much as for Saint Augustine,
Truth apart from charity is not God, it is his image and an idol, which one must make it a point
neither to love nor to worship, and still less must one love or worship its contrary,
falsehood.xxxvi
The domain of what one can from now on legitimately call theology is defined thus: the
Revelation offers a given comparable to every other given in every other science. However, the
procedures of access to this given requires a different epistemology: the given here has nothing
of the immediate, because one must believe it if one is to receive it and eventually reach a partial
and always provisional comprehension of it. In fact, belief here signifies much more than a
taking for true (assumption, opinion, conviction, doxa, the first type of knowledge, etc.); belief
requires love, because the revealed given deserves not only that one love it since it results in a
gracious gift (a grace), but above all because, in the end, and since the beginning, it concerns the
revelation of love itself. Love plays the role of epistemological mediation, of the precondition of
access to the revealed given. And it plays it because, more radically, it exhausts and identifies it
just as the Revelation shows it: love in act. Such a theology is in the literal sense so
confrontationally opposed to the thesis, for example, of Fichte: According to me, the relation of
divinity to us, as ethical beings, is one that is immediately given.xxxvii In effect, with a perfect
coherence, Fichte guarantees himself this immediacy of the given by positing a strict
transcendental attidtude: In summary: my philosophy of religion can only be judged, questioned
or reinforced from the perspective of a transcendental point of view.xxxviii And from concluding
quite logically that, assuming that theology is not epitomized by a doctrine of religion, the
doctrine of the relations of God to finite beings, but as is right and proper [claims to remain] a
doctrine of the essence of God in and for himself, then clearly and frankly, this theology
should be overwhelmed, like a dream surpassing every finite faculty of
comprehension.xxxix Theology in the sense that we are trying to explicate results from a given,
but from a given whose experience contradicts the system of metaphysics, in that it crosses
[franchit] the limits between the possible and the impossible, the ontological and the ontic, the
natural and the supernatural, limits which result from and accomplish the transcendental
attitude. This contradiction becomes the fundamental condition of every serious thinking of the
Revelation and of the mediate conditions of access to its given. To confront this contradiction
constitutes the duty and even the identity of theology as a knowledge (savoir) of Godin the
double sense of a knowledge about and a knowledge from God.
VII. Recapitulation, Suggestions
From these quick remarks, one can at least sketch some conclusions, which therefore hold as the
anticipated description of a new and still-to-come relation between a theology of the Revelation
and a philosophy in the end of metaphysics.
First, between these two knowledges (savoirs), the insuperable difference between the
modes of the given (the one revealed, the other experienced by itself) and the gap between the
modes of its experience (immediate or mediated by faith and love of the truth) even calls into
question the formal identity of their relationship to a given: like every knowledge (savoir), each
one is assigned to understanding a given. The gap between the means of access to their

respective givens and between the corresponding protocols of experimentation can only be
measured according to the formal univocity of the givens it puts into play. If one absolutely
must emphasize a difference, one can state that theology allows a given more immense (precisely
because it is revealed, mediated and coming from a radical elsewhere) than that of philosophy
and, of course, than those of the positive regional sciences. But once again, this gap indicates all
the better that they exercise the same rationality as a comprehension of a given. It suffices to
acknowledge that, if one views it strictly from the point of view of philosophy, without satisfying
its own epistemological preconditions (believing in order to comprehend, loving in order to
know [connatre]) and thus without the mediation which opens up its given, the theology of the
Revelation remains and must remain a discourse of the as if: in the best case, a philosopher will
admit that everything happens as if theological discourse rationally consisted of a given, but a
mediate given, thus surely inaccessible to its presupposed immediacy of the given in general: the
unavailability of the revealed given (mediate) does not prevent acknowledging the rationality of
its understanding. The theologian cannot ask anything more, but the philosopher would always
have to grant less. This condition holding, there is never competition between these two
knowledges [savoirs] (their givens as radically different as their ways of reaching it), nor
epistemological contradiction (the rationality of the procedures remains univocal).xl Hence it
becomes absurd, in this context, to imagine that between the philosophy of the end of
metaphysics and the theology of the Revelation the contrast can take hold of the more or less
grand freedom of research or freedom of examination.
Second, this gap and supplementary mediation above all places theology in a dominant
position in relation to other knowledges [savoirs], philosophy in particular. In effect, theology,
as theology of the Revelation, has always resisted the metaphysical formation of philosophy; that
it did not easily or often achieve this in the course of history only confirms that it always had to
attempt it in order to remain itself, without being devalued by a philosophy of compromise or
contraband. By vocation, the revealed theology must set itself up outside metaphysics. It thus
precedes philosophy, which struggles today to accept the end of metaphysics, and sometimes
even to examine the issue. But theology precedes philosophy in its own way, on the path of its
own widening as non-metaphysical philosophy. It imposes no constraints on it, but proposes its
liberation from the obstacle that weighs down the onto-theological constitution of
metaphysics. Thus theology becomes the rational guilty conscience of philosophy, because it
can (and must) immediately consider a given that is nevertheless mediatean entirely
exceptional given, it is trueamongst all the other new givens that the philosophy of the end of
metaphysics has to consider and struggles so hard to integrate. The question of the extent of
recognizing the given, in other words, the question of the extension of the field of the given and
of the modes of donation, also arises for philosophy: it is not yet exempt from considering the
mediate given of Revelation, which exceeds the limits fixed by metaphysics and the
transcendental attitude which carries it out. Thus it must integrate the non-objectifiable
phenomenon and non-beings: thus the phenomena of the flesh, of the other, of the idol, of the
event, but also of the call, of boredom, of the lover, of the language of denial,xli etc. In short, all
that one can call saturated phenomena. Just where can and must this expansion go? To this
question, for its part, the theology of the Revelation can only, by origin and definition, have
already responded: it must expand the given as far as the given of the Revelation, mediated by
faith. But philosophy, in the position of the end of metaphysics, can today barely begin to hear
this demand. It is a matter for it of admittingthat which it already practices in reality without
clearly confessing itthat its abandoning of the the transcendental attitude opens up to it the

domain, without a priori limits, of a radical empiricism, which frees it from the preliminary
question of what has the permission of being tested and what does not. An adherent of radical
empiricism, because transcendent, theology therefore also functions as the empirical guilty
conscience of philosophy. And in this sense, it sometimes precedes philosophy, additionally and
inadvertently, in the opening or construction of philosophical questions.
Thus there is a rationality of theology and it is the same, albeit more complex and more
powerful, as that of philosophy and, to a lesser degree of complexity, the same as that of the
positive sciences: the comprehension of a given.xlii Ignoring this extension of the given, and
consequently the possibility of an extension of rationality, confers no rigor on those who ignore
it, nor does it call into question those who try to practice it.xliii One can argue about whether
philosophy has ever played the role of servant to theology (ancilla theologiae), but it does not
seem absurd to suggest that theology holds the role of guardian of philosophyso that it
remains equal to its destiny.
Translated by Patrick Craig and Tom Sparrow
i

Le conflit des facults, I,1,4 Ak.A. VII, respectively pp. 32 and 34, then 35. [Immanuel
Kant, The Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 1992), pp. 53 and 55.]
ii
See on this point our study of La fin de la mtaphysique comme possibilit, in Y-a-t-il
histoire de la mtaphysique?, eds. Yves-Charles Zarka and Bruno Pinchard (Paris, P.U.F., 2005).
[The End of Metaphysics as a Possibility, trans. Daryl Lee, in Mark A. Wrathall, Religion
after Metaphysics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003).]
iii
To the theologia quatenus sermo de Deo est (Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologiae
Ia, q.1, a.7, sed contra), one can oppose a more original sermo ab Deo, in which ad nos
revelatio processit (op. cit. q.1, a.2, ad 2).
iv
De Civitate Dei, VIII, 1, 34, 230. Which echoes a definition of sapientia by Cicero: Sapientia
esse rerum divinarum et humanarum scientiam cognitionemque(Tusculanes Disputationes IV,
26, 57, ed. J.E. King [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996], p.39) and Illa autem
sapientia, quae principem dixi, rerum est divinarum et humanarum scientia, in qua continetur
deorum et hominum coommunitas ert societas inter ipsos (De Officiis I, 43, 153, ed. Walter
Miller [Cambridge: Harvard University Press 1975], p.156. Or II, 2, 5, ibid., p.172). The
reference dossier has been put together by Goulven Madec, Saint Augustin et la
philosophie (Paris, 1996), in particular c. 2 where we follow him for the essential.
v
See infra, note 13.
vi
De Civitate Dei VI, 5, 1, B.A., t.34, p.36.
vii
Varron, Antiquitatum rerum humanarum et divinarum libri III, I, frag.10, 14, 23, 28 and 29,
ed. Augusta Germana Condemi (Bologne, 1965), respectively pp. 9, 10, 14, 16 and 17,
reproducing De Civitate Dei VIII, 1, VII, 6, VI, 5, and VI, 6). Even the formula [theologia]
naturali, quae philosophorum est (De Civitate Dei VI, 8, 2, ibid., p. 86) refers to the
discourse on divinity based on nature, which is to say cosmology, such as Varron understands it,
and in no way obviously anticipates the metaphysica specialis.
viii
De Civitate Dei VII, 6, ibid., p.140.
ix
De Civitate Dei VIII, 1, ibid., pp. 22830. This point has been strongly emphasized by Joseph
Ratzinger, Vrit du christianisme?, in Christianisme. Hritages et destins, ed. Cyrille

Michon (Paris: Livre de Poche. Biblio-Essais, 2002), p. 306ff.

x
De Civitate Dei VIII, 1, ibid., p. 230. This position remains in profound harmony with that,
much older, of Saint Justin: Just as those who, amongst the Greeks, have supported the
doctrines that were suitable to them, they were contradictory between them, in the same way that
those which are expressed in the Barbarians, and they acquired there a reputation with the wise,
and they are designated with a common name: they are called Christians (Apologie I, 7,1, ed.
Charles Munier, Sources Chrtiennes, no. 507 [Paris, 2006], p.142, corrected French
translation; and also 26, 6, op. cit., p.200). See Daniel Bourgeois, La Sagesse des anciens dans le
mystre du Verbe. Evangile et philosophie chez saint Justin, philosophe et martyr (Paris: Tequi,
1981).
xi
tienne Gilson even goes so far as Calvin: the Christian philosophy of Calvin is a purely
supernatural wisdom; in a word, it is a Theology (Chrsitianisme et Philosophie [Paris, 1981], p.
32). On this syntagm, see Gustave Bardy, Philosophie et philosophe dans le vocabulaire
Chrtien des premieres sicles, Revue dAsctique et de Mystique 25 (1949).
xii
In duodecim libros Metapysicorum Aristotelis Expositio, Prooemium, ed. M. R. Cathala
(Rome, 1964), pp. 12.
xiii
On the contrasted meanings of theology as a metaphysica specialis in opposition to the
theologia of the Revelation, see our brief clarifications in Tho-logique, in Encyclopdie
philosophique, t. 1, Lunivers philosophique, (Paris: P.U.F., 1989) and in Jean-Luc
Marion, Etant donn. Essai dune phenomenologie de la donation (Paris: P.U.F., 1996, 2005), p.
104ff. [Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Stanford:
Stanford University Press, 2002).] as well as Olivier Boulnois, Duns Scot. La rigueur de la
charit (Paris: Le Cerf, 1998), c. 3. For the global history of the constitution of metaphysics as
metaphysica generalis and metaphysica specialis (including theologia rationalis), see Jean-Luc
Marion, Sur le prisme mtaphysique de Descartes (Paris: P.U.F., 2004), c. 1 [On Descartes'
Metaphysical Prism, trans. Jeffrey L. Kosky (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999),
chapter 1] and La science toujours recherche et toujours manquante (in La mtaphysique. Son
histoire, sa crique, ses enjeux, eds. Jean-Marc Narbonne and Luc Langlois [Paris/Qubec,
1999]), the dossier of Jean-Francios Courtine, Suarez et le systme de la mtaphysique (Paris:
P.U.F., 1990), based on the work of Hans Reiner, Die Enstehung und ursprngliche Bedeutung
des Namens Metaphysik, Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung (1954), and Ernst Vollrath,
Die Gliederung der Metaphysik in eine Metaphysica generalis und eine Metaphysica
specialis, Zeitschrift fr philosophische Forschung (1962) then die These der Metaphysik. Zur
Gestalt der Metaphysik bei Aristoteles, Kant, und Hegel (Wuppertal, 1969). The Heideggerian
background of this question has been approached in Jean-Luc Marion, Dieu sans ltre (Paris:
P.U.F., 1981, 2002), c. 2 and 3. [God without Being, trans. Thomas A. Carlson (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991), chapter 2 and 3.]
xiv
In librum Boethii De Trinitate, q.5, a.4, Opuscula omnia, ed. Pierre Mandonnet (Paris, 1927),
vol. III, p. 119ff. See Theologia, quae ad sacram doctrinam pertinet, differt secundum genus
ab illa theologia, quae pars philosophiae ponitur (Summa theologiae Ia, q.1, a.2, ad 2).
xv
Phnomenologie und Theologie, in Wegmarken, G.A. 9, p. 61, (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio
Klostermann, 1976), p. 68. ["Phenomenology and Theology," in Pathmarks, ed. William
McNeill (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), p. 50.] Text that Heidegger references
quite logically (ibid., p. 45) in Sein und Zeit 7, which counts theology between biology,
sociology, etc. amongst the sciences of phenomena which phenomenology dominates and

renders possible itself. [Being and Time, trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson (New
York: Harper and Row, 1962).]
xvi
Sein ohne das Seinde denken, heit: Sein ohne Rcksicht auf die Metaphysik zu denken
(Zeit und Sein, in Zur Sache des Denkens, G.A. 14, [Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann,
2007], p. 29). [To think Being without beings means: to think Being without regard to
metaphysics. On Time and Being, trans. Joan Stambaugh (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 1972), p. 24.]
xvii
Sein verschwindet im Ereignis (Zeit und Sein, p. 27). [Being vanishes in Appropriation.
On Time and Being, p. 22.]
xviii
One could even translate it calls those things which do not exist as much as beings,
echoing the being [ltant] as much as being [tant]. On the theoretical implications of this text,
see our reading in Dieu sans ltre, III, 4, p. 128ff. (and 182). [God without Being, p. 83ff.]
xix
See a more detailed argument in Limpossible pour lhommeDieu, Confrence, no. 18
(Spring 2004). [The impossible for ManGod, in Transcendence and Beyond: A Postmodern
Inquiry, eds. John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press,
2007).]
xx
Ordinatio, Prologue, n.5, in Opera omnia, vol. 1, ed. Carl Balic (Rome: Vatican Polyglot
Press, 1950), p. 4.
xxi
On the incomprehensibility of man, defined by its absence even of definition, see our essay
Mihi magna quaestio factus sum. The Privilege of Unknowing, The Journal of Religion 85,
no.1 (January 2005). [French original 'Mihi magna quaestio factus sum, le privilge
d'inconnaissance, Confrence, no. 20 (Spring 2005).]
xxii
Summa theologiae IaIIae, q.5, a.5, ad.2: Nobilioris conditionis est natura, quae potest
consequi perfectum bonum, licet indigeat exteriori auxilio ad hoc consequendum, quam natura,
quae non potest consequi perfectum bonum, sed consequitur quoddam bonum imperfectum, licet
ad consecutionem ejus non indigeat exteriori auxilio. On this doctrine see the work of Henri de
Lubac, Le Mystre du Surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1965) [The Mystery of the Supernatural, trans.
Geoffrey Chapman Ltd. (New York: Crossroad, 1998).] and Augustinisme et thologie
moderne (Paris: Cerf, 2009). [Augustinianism and Modern Theology, trans. Geoffrey Chapman
Ltd. (New York: Crossroad, 2000).] On the intrinsic connection of this doctrine with
metaphysics from Suarez and Descartes, see our study De quoi lego est-il capable?
Divinisation et domination, in Questions cartsiennes. Mthode et mtaphysique (Paris: P.U.F.,
1991), c. 4. [Cartesian Questions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), chapter 4.]
xxiii
Franois Bourgoing: there are three sorts of theology, the positive, the scholastic, and the
mystical [] the mystical applies its truths and it serves to elevate the soul to God (Preface to
the Oeuvres compltes of Pierre de Brulle, ed. Jacques-Paul Migne [Paris: Cerf, 1998], p. 83).
xxiv
One should not forget that Spinoza takes over the formulas natura naturans/natura naturata
(Ethica I, I, 29ff.) from Saint Thomas Aquinas (among others, Summa theologiae IaIIae, q.85,
a.6, resp.), who himself followed John Scotus Eriugena.
xxv
On this so crucial issue, we follow Marie-Dominique Chenu, La thologie comme science au
XIII sicle (Paris: Vrin, 1942). This formula is found at p. 13 of the 1969 edition. It can
obviously be taken in two opposing directions.
xxvi
Marie-Dominique Chenu, op. cit. pp. 82, 83.
xxvii
habitus fidei, qui est quasi habitus principiorum (In Sententiarum, q.1, Prologus, a.3,
sol. 2); or ipsa quae fide tenemus sunt quasi prima principia in haec scientia (Summa

theologiae Ia, q.2, a.2, resp.). See Et hoc modo sacra doctrina est scientia, quia procedit ex
principiis notis lumine superioris scientiae, quae scilicet est scientia Dei et beatorum (Summa
theologiae Ia, q.1, a.2). We stress that by right [en droit] it is not a matter of a strict
subalternation between two sciences, because the science of God from the saints itself does not
constitute a science in Aristotles sense; it is only a matter of the donation (or of the arrangement
[la mise disposition]) of principles which are themselves non scientific; thus it is a matter of, at
least, a quasi-subalternation. Marie-Dominique Chenu very honestly stresses it, in spite of his
slightly critical enthusiasm.
xxviii
Summa theologiae Ia, q.1, a.2, resp.
xxix
Propter hoc dictum est a quodam, quoniam apud Aristotelem argumentum est ratio rei
dubiae faciens fidem, apud Christum autem argumentum est fides faciens rationem (Guillame
dAuxerre, Summa aurea. Prologus, ed. Philippe Pigouchet, f.2ra), cited by Marie-Dominique
Chenu (op.cit., p. 35), which identifies Simon de Tornai as the inventor of this formula:
Doctrina Aristotleis est de his de quibus ratio fecit fidem, sed Christi doctrina de his quorum
fides facit rationem (Expositio in symbolum Quicumque, ms. Paris lat. 14886, f.73a). Also, see
Gilbert de la Porre: In caeteris facultatibus [] non ratio fidem, sed fides praevenit
rationem. In his enim non cognoscentes credimus, sed credentes cognoscimus (In Boethii de
praedicatione tribus personarum, P.L. 64, 1303ff.).
xxx
Contra Faustum, 32, 18, PL42, 507. One must not fail (like Heidegger, Being and Time, 29)
to read the conclusion: Probamus etiam ipsum [viz., Spiritum Sanctum] inducere in omnem
veritatem, quia non intratur in veritatem, nisi per charitatem: Charitas autem Dei diffusa est,
ait Apostolus, in cordibus nostris per Spiritum Sanctum qui datus est nobis (Romans 5:5). This
epistemological reversal surely consists in knowing the revealed given as given on the basis of
what the Holy Spirit gives with love; thus one can not place it in the account of a supposedly
methodologically atheistic analytic of Daseinor then it would be recognized that this
analytic only destroys ontologia with the tools of the Revelation itself, without a doubt the most
powerful deconstruction thinkable of the metaphysical system (just as it negatively proves the
recent attempts of Jean-Luc Nancy and, with less of a qualification, Jacques Derrida).
xxxi
See De lart de persuader, in Oeuvres Compltes, ed. Louis Lafuma (Paris: Aux Editions du
Seuil, 1963), p. 355 (we have commented on this thesis in Sur le prisme mtaphysique de
Descartes, 25, p. 360ff.). [On Descartes' Metaphysical Prism, p. 333ff.] Heidegger, who cites it
ibidem, erroneously refers to Vgl. Penses, a.a., a confusion due to the imprecise usage of the
edition Lon Brunschvicg, Penses et Opuscules (Paris: Hachette, 1912), p. 169 (see the note to
1 op. cit., p. 4).
xxxii
Penses, 739, Oeuvres Compltes, op. cit., p. 596.
xxxiii
Penses 377, op. cit., p. 546.
xxxiv
Fragment dune XIXe Provinciale, op. cit., p. 469.
xxxv
Penses, 978, op. cit., p. 636ff. To bring it closer to: There is a great difference between
not being for Jesus Christ and saying so, and not being for Jesus Christ and pretending to be
so. The one party can do miracles, not the others. For it is clear of the one party, that they are
opposed to the truth, but not of the others; and thus miracles are clearer (843, op. cit., p. 610).
xxxvi
Penses, 926, op. cit., p. 622. Likewise, the text bears that Contradiction has always been
permitted, in order to blind the wicked, because all that offends truth or charity is evil. That is
the true principle (Penses, 962, op. cit., p. 632) would be almost as valuable as a literal
commentary on an Augustinian sequence: Initium operorum bonorum, confessio est operum

malorum. Facis veritatem et venis ad lucem. Quid est facis veritatem? [] Venis ad lucem ut
manifestentur opera tua, quia in Deo sunt facta; quia et hoc ipsum quod tibi displicuit peccatum
tuum, non tibi displiceret, nisi Deus tibi luceret et ejus veritatem ostenderet. (Commentaire de
levangile de Jean, XII, 13. PL 35, 1491).
xxxvii
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Appel au public contre laccusation dathisme, II, in Querelle de
lathisme suivie de divers texts sur la religion, trans. Jean-Christophe Goddard (Paris: Vrin,
1993), p. 55. [Fichtes Werke, Band V (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1971), p. 214.]. For example,
because the same antagonisms can easily be found in Kant and Hegel, not to mention their
successors.
xxxviii
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Rappels, Rponses, Questions, 19 (French translation., op. cit. p.
149, Werke, op. cit., p. 351).
xxxix
Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Lettre prive (French translation, op. cit., p.181, Werke, op. cit., p.
386ff.).
xl
It must be emphasized that philosophy does not and cannot do theology (above all when it does
philosophy of religion): what philosophers denounce as a theological turn remains a false terror,
because it is a matter of a pious vow, an illusory pretension: philosophy does not have the means
of such a turn and is far from being one, since it does not have access to the given (mediated by
faith) of the Revelation.
xli
We contemplate here the revival of (what one wrongly calls) "negative theology" by
contemporary philosophy, as much in the phenomenological movement (Derrida and his
discussion of our revival of the Dionysian doctrine in order to deconstruct deconstruction), see
"Au nom ou comment le taire," in De surcrot. Etudes sur les phnomnes saturs (Paris: P.U.F.,
2003), c. VI ["In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of It," in In Excess: Studies in Saturated
Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press,
2004), chapter 6] and "On the Gift: A Discussion Between Jacques Derrida and Jean-Luc
Marion, moderated by Richard Kearney," in God, the Gift, and Postmodernism, eds. John D.
Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999), as in the
analytical movement, where the late Wittgenstein looks like a patient and resolute transgression
of prohibition, who concludes the Tractatus logico-philosophicus: whereof one cannot speak,
thereof one must be silent, for the silence already implies the speaking of a voice or of another,
or even of a third voice.
xlii
One knows the celebrated definition formulated by tienne Gilson: "The Christian
philosopher is a philosopher who, although formally distinguishing two orders, considers the
Christian Revelation as an indispensable auxiliary of reason" (op. cit., p. 138, see L'Espirit de la
philosophie mdivale [Paris: Vrin, 1932], p. 33 [The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy, trans.
A.H.C. Downes (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991)] and our discussion "La
'philosophie chrtienne'hermneutique ou heuristique?," in Le Visible et le Rvl [Paris: Cerf,
2005], c. IV, p. 99ff. ["'Christian Philosophy: Hermeneutic or Heuristic?," in The Visible and the
Revealed, trans. Christina M. Gschwandtner (New York: Fordham University Press, 2008), p.
66ff] the conclusions of which we essentially maintain here). We emend it thus: Christian
theology, not precisely distinguishing its rationality from that of philosophy (because reason is
one and universal), but attaining through a mediation (of faith) a given larger than that which
philosophy imposes, by playing its proper role, on philosophy by freeing itself from the
transcendental limits of the system of metaphysics.
xliii
This deserves a remark by tienne Gilson: "Assuredly there is and perhaps there always will

be some philosophers without faith or law, but what they miss could not confer any formal
exactitude on what remains for them. Philosophy is not more a philosophy when it is pagan than
when it is Christian, it is then only an obscured philosophy. Philosophy is not less a philosophy
when it is Christian than when it is pagan, nor is it more so, but it is better" (Christianity and
Philosophy, trans. R. MacDonald [New York: Sheed and Ward, 1939], p. 87).