Theology as Repetition

John Macquarrie in Conversation

Stephen Foster

• Publisher: Pickwick Publications
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781532676956
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Systematic Theology & Ethics

Theology as Repetition revisits and argues for a revival of John Macquarrie's philosophical theology. Macquarrie was a key twentieth-century theological voice and was considered a foremost interpreter and translator of Martin Heidegger's philosophy. He then somehow fell from view. Macquarrie developed a new style of theology, grounded in a dialectical phenomenology that is a relevant voice in responding to recent trends in theology. The development of the book is partly chronological and partly thematic, and avoids attempting to be either deductive or inductive in argument, but rather reflects Macquarrie's phenomenologically styled new theology. Theology as Repetition is set out in two parts. The first part situates Macquarrie in relation to thinkers from the radical theology of the 1960s through to the postmodernists of the late twentieth century. The second part explores the intersection of key themes in Macquarrie's theology with the thinking of Kant, Hegel, Heidegger, and representative postsecular and postmodern figures, including but not limited to Emmanuel Levinas, Jacques Derrida, and Jean-Luc Marion.

Part one

Situating Macquarrie’s Theology

1

Pilgrimage in Theology

Thinking and speaking, according to John Macquarrie, can only ever happen in a world of experience, they are worldly activities. So it seems appropriate to situate Macquarrie’s thinking and speaking in a world of theology.1 “Theology,” of course, can be defined in many ways, but for Macquarrie it means generally a coherent thinking of the faith of the church. In this chapter we situate Macquarrie’s theological thinking according to the influences that have given shape and form to his thought, that move him to think and to speak in response to what has been thought and spoken by others; for this is also what theology is, a conversation, a dialogue among those who share a common quest.

It is not insignificant that this worldly activity of theology was the original context for the Gospel; for certainly in the Christian faith, it is the incarnation2 that is the “crux” of theology: God entering the world. In his The Humility of God,3 Macquarrie offers the following observation:

This is why Christian theologians have never been willing to go along with rationalist and idealist philosophers who have sought to turn Christian teaching into a set of eternal truths. Theologians, have on the contrary, insisted on the particularity and concreteness of certain events, especially the event of Jesus Christ . . . One of the profoundest passages in all of literature is the prologue to St. John’s gospel. It makes two great assertions. The first is a timeless or eternal truth: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). The second is a particular historical truth: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth; we have beheld his glory, glory as the only Son from the Father” (John 1:14) . . . The meaning that is fundamental to the universe and is indeed identical with God has become flesh, and manifested its glory in a particular human person living in a particular locality at a particular period. This becoming flesh is what is meant by the term “incarnation.”

However, different from the world in which the Word first becomes manifest and proclaimed, which was a world “full of gods,” the context of Macquarrie’s theology is a secular world, precisely a time that strives to live without gods or God. A time, according to some, where the word “God” has lost any and all meaning.4 However, with the advent of a post-secular society, perhaps we have once again moved into a “world full of gods” and theology is called upon to again steer a course through a variety of possibilities. And one can suppose this is not dissimilar to the original context of the Gospel, where messiahs were announced everywhere. In the modern epoch, Nietzsche’s announcement about the “death of God” began a movement that for some meant the impossibility of “God Talk” and for others unleashed a discourse where every kind of talk about God is possible. Yet, Nietzsche’s madman is merely another messenger, since for Nietzsche Kant had killed God when he showed the arguments for the existence of God to be unsatisfactory. But Macquarrie does not see the announcing of the death of this God as the death of divinity. Instead, it allows the birth of a new way of thinking about God, one that escapes the grips of the old style natural theology called into question by Hume and Kant. Macquarrie’s theology—as well as secular and post-secular theology in general—is to be read within the context of how to advance theological thought after Nietzsche’s word, “God is dead.”

Because theology is a worldly activity it is primarily about participation within a community that distinguishes itself from the secular “world” through its specific faith. So to speak, it is to be in the world but never merely of the world. Theology must also strive to be intelligible to a wider intellectual community that may not share the particular presuppositions of Christian faith. Theology, as an intellectual enterprise, shares with other disciplines the values of truth, consistency, and clarity of expression.5 Theology must be able to “think” and “speak” meaningfully not only within its own community but to the secular community at large. This is the task of theology. Therefore theology is also a “step-back” from faith, subjecting faith to thought;6 Macquarrie’s philosophical theology is very much an attempt to indicate how this is possible.7 It does not attempt to “prove” anything, but must point the way to a credible possibility. And, therefore, contrary to Heidegger who is his mentor in many ways, Macquarrie insists that theology “thinks.” It is not merely a vocabulary for the subjectivity of faith. Neither is theology another “world-view,” a concept that Macquarrie considers too rational and intellectual, or a philosophy in disguise that desires to abandon transcendence. Theology is itself an interpretation of reality through a hermeneutic of what and who that reality is. And, Macquarrie tells us, “Faith’s name for reality is God.”8 Theology is a word about the Word, the Logos. Every logos, Macquarrie states—following Aristotle—“is at once synthesis and diairesis, putting together and taking apart.”9

Macquarrie’s theological development moves from a “narrow existentialism”10 inspired by his early researches into Bultmann, to “existential-ontological” theism as an expression of his mature theology, as this is especially found in the second edition of his Principles of Christian Theology.11 He developed the ideas expressed in Principles into later books, such as In Search of Humanity; In Search of Deity; and Jesus Christ in Modern Thought.12 He would come to call his position in these later writings “dialectical theism,” reflecting the central role of “dialectic” in his methodology as a way of ever engaging possible interpretations of reality. And yet, preserving “theism” as a reminder that we cannot fall prey to the pull of absolute immanence, the drive and desire is always toward the infinite future possibility of being.

Macquarrie’s particular method of dialectic shares features of Socratic dialogue and the Hegelian resolution of opposites, without being comfortably resolved into any one of these different approaches. He often uses the strategy of opposition in reviewing ideas, and this too is with the intention of showing the need to find truth on both sides. So for example, when undertaking the existential analytic of the human being he uses polarities “within” the human subject as a heuristic device to show the dynamics of existence. But you see it in his review of philosophical and theological positions, for example, in his book God and Secularity, which sets these key words up as dialectical opposites, or in his review of postmodernism in Twentieth-Century Religious Thought, where a series of oppositions between modernism and postmodernism are analyzed in order to recognize the scope and limits of both. He is “Socratic” in that he is always entertaining the possibility to question received wisdom and dogmatic propositions. He is a pilgrim, a searcher, willing to dismantle—even deconstruct—certitudes that threaten to become idols of knowledge along his path. He is “Hegelian” in that his Socratic destruction is a step along the way toward unity of truth, of resolution of difference while celebrating diversity. He has a vision of the whole through the particular phenomena and his idealism is always checked by his existentialism.

Dialectical theism also preserves the word “theism,” which had during this time fallen into disrepute because of its close associations with metaphysics13 and its association with the radical transcendence and “otherness” of God. Theism was to be rejected in favor of a view of God more intimately connected with the world. But Macquarrie thinks theism can be descriptive of both the transcendence and immanence of God. “So, for me,” he writes, “theism is not a bad word, and can be used both of Christianity and some non-Christian conceptions of God, both philosophical and religious. For instance, Hegel and Hartshorne are good examples of very different philosophers who claimed to be theists but whose conceptions of God were not of a supreme Ruler but much more closer to the Christian understanding.”14

The radical criticism of theis...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Part One: Situating Macquarrie’s Theology
• Part Two: Onto-Theology: Dialectical Theism and Postmodernism
• Bibliography