Phenomenology_of_Revelation. the Disclosure of Revelation in Karl Barth's Theology and Jean-Luc Marion's Topology of Phenomena

Joshua Roe

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Phenomenology of Revelation: The disclosure of revelation in

Karl Barth’s theology and Jean-Luc Marion’s topology of

phenomena

Introduction

The accounts of revelation offered by Karl Barth and Jean-Luc Marion have ambiguous

attitudes towards phenomenology. Phenomenology is examined directly by both, most

notably, with the work of Martin Heidegger. However the extent their individual engagements

with phenomenology differ. Barth is a theologian and only examines Heidegger as a

clarification of his theology of revelation. However, this essay will also consider the

phenomenological implications of his theory of revelation when he is not explicitly dealing

with phenomenology. In particular, it will be argued that in his debate with Emil Brunner, he

shows that he is actually closer to Heidegger’s account of the Nothing in ‘What is Metaphysics’

than Barth admits himself. Unlike Barth, Marion is has done several extensive studies on

phenomenology and as such has wider recognition within the school of phenomenology.

Recently, John McNassor has compared Barth and Marion based on their theological method.1

He argues that Marion’s account of revelation is more complete than Barth’s because he

presupposes the importance of the immediacy of experience, whereas he thinks that Barth’s

resistance to the value of human experience means that he tends towards devaluing creation.

Marion, like Barth, also advocates the development of theology that is not determined by

human ideas, which leads him to develop the notion of saturated phenomena. Marion claims

that phenomenology, as it was concieved by Husserl, did not grasp the richness of experience

because he limited experience to what can be grasped through concepts. Against Husserl,

1 John H McNassor, Revelation and Phenomenology in the Christologies of Karl Barth and Jean-Luc

Marion: A Case Study in Theological Method (Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest, Umi Dissertation Publishing, 2011).

Joshua Roe - Phenomenology of Revelation

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Marion argues that there is a more basic form of experience which is unmediated by human

concepts, which he describes as pure givenness. Pure givenness is the state of experience that

is prior to our application of concepts to this experience and thus is pure content or intuition

without being affected by human understanding (or intentionality). Marion argues that there

are special cases of phenomena can reveal the pure givenness, which he labels saturated

phenomena. These are cases where the experience exceeds our capacity to find concepts to

understand it. The difference between pure givenness and saturated phenomena is that while

pure givenness can only occur before conceptualisation, saturated phenomena can appear

after conceptualisation. The limitation of conceptualisation in saturated phenomena is thus an

account of revelation because it cannot be established by human reason (as in natural

theology). Marion claims that the effect of saturated phenomena is that it negates

conceptualisation so that its distinctive character is in pure givenness. However, it will be

argued that Marion’s account of saturated phenomena displays ambiguity that on one side is

restrictive about the accessibility of pure givenness but on the other side suggests that pure

givenness is universally accessible. The former aspect is closer to Barth’s suspicion of natural

theology and more distanced to phenomenology. Yet the more universal accessibility of

givenness leans more towards phenomenology than revelation. Barth and Marion share in

common an ambiguous relationship to phenomenology because they both dismiss

phenomenology in the face of a theology of revelation they also display closer affinity to

phenomenology than their sometimes admit.

Barth and Revelation

Karl Barth’s (1886-1968) theological method begins with the revelation of Christ and then

examines the world from this revelation. He begins with the particularity of Christian

revelation and then uses this as a framework to order the rest of the (secular) world. This is

based on a strong notion of original sin, whereby the human person is in no position to be able


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to judge the truth of Scripture by their own means. For example, in Church Dogmatics he

writes: ‘It can only be that the Bible gives itself to be understood by us, so that we come to

hear the Bible as God’s Word’.2 He claims that this does not mean that revelation is completely

separated from the secular world but asserts that revelation presupposes the secular.3 The

difference is not between the secular and the Christian, but between the attitudes of the

world and the Christian attitude. Without God’s revelation, we would experience not be able

to understand the purpose of the world as part of God’s creation.4 The purpose of revelation in

Barth’s theology is to show how the secular is part of God’s creation and so the immediate, like

the particular, is only really recognised through the theological.

Despite rejecting the priority of the particular, which is the distinguishing feature of

phenomenology, John McNassor argues that Barth displays sensitivity towards his

contemporaneous philosophical developments. He bases this argument on the later work of

Barth, in particular his Introduction to Evangelical Theology. Here Barth states that theology

can indeed use philosophy just so long as theology is not made subordinate to philosophy.5

However, in this section Barth makes reference to particular philosophies only in passing when

he writes, ‘It makes no difference whether this regulation is proclaimed in the name of

Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, Hegel, or Heidegger’.6 However, this is not sufficient to support

McNassor’s argument that Barth, like Marion, actively engages with contemporary philosophy.

In fact, the brevity of this section indicates the opposite, that he is not concerned with

philosophical engagement, except in the most minimal sense. To further examine this

indication we will have to examine Barth’s more extensive engagement with philosophy.

2 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Study ed. (London: T & T Clark, 2009), I.1, p. 116.

3 Barth, I.1, pp. 168–9.

4 Barth, I.1, p. 155.

5 McNassor, p. 6.

6 Karl Barth, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963), p. 91.


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Barth’s reading of Heidegger

In Church Dogmatics, Barth examines the interaction between philosophy and theology more

closely. His engagements with Martin Heidegger are most significant here because they

provide a grounding point for comparison with Marion, who developed his account of

givenness through a close examination of Heidegger. The most significant dealing Barth has in

Church Dogmatics with Heidegger is in §50 entitled ‘God and Nothingness’. His engagement

with Heidegger is not for theological reasons but to establish the difference between secular

philosophy and theology.

Overall, the purpose of the section is to distinguish the negative aspects of God’s creation to

nothingness as equivalent to sin.7 Barth distinguishes between the negation (nicht) and

‘nothingness’ (das Nichtige). The meaning of nothingness is ascribed to value rather than in

terms of quantity, as Barth states ‘Nothingness is not nothing’.8 Nothingness is then creaturely

activity that cannot be attributed to God’s nature; it is the creature’s movement away from

God. This is to be distinguished from mere negativity, which is part of God’s creation.

Barth’s engages with his contemporary philosophers by first addressing Sartre’s notion of

nothingness and then Heidegger’s dealing with the nothing (das Nichts). Since Marion does not

deal in any great length with Sartre, for the purposes of comparison this study will only

examine Barth’s engagement with Heidegger. Barth focuses on Heidegger’s essay ‘What is

Metaphysics?’ First of all, Barth makes it clear that Heidegger’s appeal for recognition of the

nothing does not make him a nihilist. This remark is made in response to Heidegger’s emphasis

on the importance of angst, which Barth thinks was intended to bring out a ‘positive basis’ for

science and metaphysics. Barth thinks that Heidegger conceals the place of God with the

7 Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, Study ed. (London: T & T Clark, 2009), III.3, p. 307.

8 ‘Das Nichtige ist nicht das Nichts’ Barth, III.3, p. 349.


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nothing. This is a purely negative replacing of God, in which the nothing completely and

irreversibly replaced the role of God.9

Barth’s reading of Heidegger shows an ambiguous relationship to philosophy. On the one

hand, Barth makes a careful and close reading of Heidegger’s ‘What is Metaphysics?’ On the

other hand he rejects the validity of Heidegger’s conclusions for his own project. Barth

concludes:

But one conclusion is inevitable. The nothing of Heidegger, which may also be called

being and under either title arrogates the function of God, can never be identified with

nothingness in the Christian sense.10

Barth asserts that the basis for this rejection is that the nothing ‘arrogates the function of

God’, this was shown to be an inaccurate understanding of Heidegger’s thought. Here, Barth is

arguing from a strong revelatory perspective that makes a sharp distinction between the

natural world and the Christian meaning of salvation. However, Barth’s view of Heidegger is

probably influenced by his perception of Heidegger as entirely uninterested in revelation.

When Barth was informed of Heidegger’s work in 1924 by Thurneysen, Heidegger’s

relationship to Christianity was unclear. Thurneysen had stated that he was not clear about

Heidegger’s own position.11 Elsewhere, Barth writes that Heidegger has nothing to say on

theology.12 Given Barth’s conviction about the distinctiveness of Christianity and he perception

of Heidegger’s relationship to theology, it would have been natural for Barth to have

accentuated the differences between his own and Heidegger’s thinking. In order to mediate

between Heidegger and Barth it will now be argued that elsewhere Barth does display an

attitude that is compatible with Heidegger’s account of nothingness.

9 Barth, III.3, p. 343.

10 Barth, III.3, p. 348.

11 Kenneth Oakes, Karl Barth on Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 85;

Karl Barth, Karl Barth - Eduard Thurneysen Briefwechsel: 1921-1930, ed. by Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, 5 (Zürich: Theolog. Verl., 1974), pp. 228–30. 12

Karl Barth, Karl Barth - Rudolf Bultmann Briefwechsel: 1911-1966, ed. by Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, 1 (Zürich: Theolog. Verl., 1981), p. 127.


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In his debate with Brunner, Barth makes an important objection to natural theology by

introducing the problem of capacity.13 Barth argues that the job of the preacher should not be

to try to improve the audience’s capacity for recognising revelation because this does not

appreciate the detrimental effect of sin.14 Instead, Barth argues that the role of the preacher is

to meet their audience in their own existing rejection of the Gospel.15 Revelation is purely the

work of the Holy Spirit and cannot be altered by human means. The effect of this critique of

the capacity of revelation made by Barth is an affirmation of the contingency of the human

capacity for knowledge (in particular, natural knowledge of God). It is implicitly opposed to the

anthropology that proposes a universal capacity of understanding for all human beings: ‘And

this impotency might be the tribulation and affliction of those who, as far as human reason can

see, possess neither reason, responsibility nor ability to make decisions: new-born children

and idiots [sic]’.16 The anthropology that accepts the capacity for the natural knowledge of God

does not contemplate the absence of such human capacities and thus does not consider the

possibility that the incapacitated may have an impact on our understanding of capacity. Barth

extends this principle further to argue that there is no pristine capacity for natural knowledge

of God that is unaffected by the incapacitating effects of sin.

The comparison of Barth’s argument against Brunner’s natural theology with Heidegger’s

account of nothingness shows that Barth is closer to Heidegger than he actually admits. In

‘What is Metaphysics?’, Heidegger argues that the concept of the nothing is not properly

grasped in science because science is ‘concerned only with beings’ and ‘wishes to know

nothing of the nothing’.17 The objection is that science only considers presence and not the

13

Andrew Moore, ‘Theological Critiques of Natural Theology’, in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. by Russell Re Manning, John Hedley Brooke, and Fraser Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). I would also like to acknowledge this point to a conversation with Andrew Moore. 14

Karl Barth, ‘No! Answer to Karl Brunner’, in Natural theology: comprising ‘Nature and Grace’, by Emil Brunner and Karl Barth (London: Geoffrey Bles, The Centenary Press, 1946), pp. 125–6. 15

Barth, ‘No! Answer to Karl Brunner’, pp. 127–8. 16

Barth, ‘No! Answer to Karl Brunner’, pp. 88–9. 17

Martin Heidegger, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, in Basic writings from Being and time (1927) to The task of thinking (1964), ed. by David Farrell Krell, Rev. and expanded ed. (London: Routledge, 1993), p. 96.


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possibility that this presence is affected by its absence. The scientific approach is one in which

deficiencies in beings are considered as exceptions that do not affect normal cases. In contrast,

nothingness and its relationship to being inverts this structure. For example, when he states:

‘Da-sein means: being held out into the nothing’, he is proposing that Da-sein as the ‘normal’

case is maintained by resisting the exceptional cases.18 The nothing represents the ultimate

failure of all the human capacities, including existence and knowledge, and that ‘normality’ can

be maintained only temporarily. The strength of human knowledge is thus an illusion because

it has to hide its own vulnerability.

Similarly, Barth’s criticism against natural theology is that natural knowledge of God self-

deceives by supposing a greater capacity for knowledge than is permitted by our sinful state.

Instead he claims that the more dominant human condition is one in which human beings do

not have the capacity to know God. Both Barth and Heidegger share the principle that positive

human knowledge is affected by its weakness. When Barth argued that Heidegger uses

nothingness as the positive basis of science, he did not grasp implications of its epistemological

limitations. Therefore he overlooks their common attitude towards the incapacity of human

knowledge.

McNassor describes Barth as engaging in ‘respectful conversation with philosophy’.19 This may

be a true assessment of his intention but does not take into account the content of Barth’s

engagement. When Barth makes explicit engagement with Heidegger he is unable to grasp its

similarity to his own thinking. The weakness in Barth’s account of revelation is that by outright

rejecting the influence of philosophy in theology, he does not recognise his own implicit

agreement with secular philosophies. The revelation of Christ is not as distinct from the

phenomenology of Heidegger as Barth would like to have it. Implicitly this suggests that

phenomenology could provide a basis for understanding revelation. However, Barth’s

18

Heidegger, p. 103. 19

McNassor, p. 6.


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resistance to secular philosophies means that he has not developed this possibility. In contrast,

Marion’s account of saturated phenomena has a more explicit engagement of the relationship

between phenomenology and revelation. Thus Marion’s account of revelation and

phenomenology provides a clearer foundation for assessing the phenomenological basis of a

theology of revelation.

Marion and Saturated Phenomena

Jean-Luc Marion (1946-) has developed a special case of phenomena that he calls ‘saturated

phenomena’, which are distinguished from common phenomena. Saturated phenomena

provide the basis for Marion’s account of revelation because these have special access to

content that cannot be dominated by human cognitive capacity. Underlying Marion’s

conception of saturated phenomena is the pure givenness of phenomena. He argues that the

most basic element in all phenomena is the fact that it was given prior to being understood by

humans, or in phenomenological terms, intentionality. Saturated phenomena are the special

cases that show this pure givenness of phenomena.

He argues that the special case of saturated phenomena has been neglected in

phenomenology. The given, Marion claims, is part of experience that cannot be fully disclosed

within our human capacity to construct an order of the world. He expresses this point through

Kant’s terminology, in which the givenness of phenomena exceeds intuition and concept.

However he does not think that all phenomena overflow intuition and concept as he makes a

distinction between saturated and poor phenomena. Kant had focused on poor phenomena

because he was restricted by the limited set of cases that he considers.20 Marion defines poor

phenomena as that which is lacking in intuition. For example mathematics or the natural

sciences are poor in givenness because they restrict the content of experience to what can be

grasped through intentionality.

20

Jean-Luc Marion, Being given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. by Jeffrey Kosky (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002), p. 203.


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In saturated phenomena, intuition is not restricted by concept and they are not ‘bounded’ by

intention. This explained through the significance of the flesh for Marion. The flesh is a

saturated phenomenon because it is not reducible to the interaction with an inanimate object.

He distinguishes between the flesh and the object because the flesh offers no resistance

whereas an object resists.21 This means, to put it into Heideggerian terms, that an object

maintains its being even when Being withdraws. The non-resistance of the other flesh means

that the flesh easy disappears, by which Marion means it becomes an object again.22 This

means that the flesh belongs in the body in such a way that it withdraws into the body.

However, this body is unlike an object because it is not made to appear by the withdrawing of

the flesh. This process of withdrawing shows how the flesh does not offer resistance; the flesh

disappears into the body. Therefore when someone recognises the flesh, they recognise

something that in its vulnerability, they have no control over because the only thing that can

be controlled is the body.

In other words, when I encounter the other, their vulnerability shows the weakness of my

intention. My intention can only act on the other by making it into an object but this restricts

intuition. The flesh is based in intuition because it ‘appears’. It is based on concept insofar as

the body can also appear as an object (for example in a medical examination). The body is

saturated insofar as the flesh makes it appear. Thus saturation is recognised when the body is

not regarded for itself but as given by the flesh. The significance of the flesh as saturated is

that could never be accounted for in bodily terms. In Marion’s account of the flesh he seems to

suggest a sharp division between the saturated phenomenon (flesh) and the poor

phenomenon (body). This leads to the objection that has been made against Marion by Bruce

Ellis Benson and Graham Ward that the notion of saturated phenomena is ‘too pure’ to be

useful for the engagement between the world and revelation.

21

Jean-Luc Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 118. 22

Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. by Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), pp. 88–9.


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The ‘Purity’ of Revelation in Saturated Phenomena

Bruce Ellis Benson argues that Marion performs a double move when he focuses on the

Eucharist for his explication of saturated phenomena. He intends to overcome the tradition of

philosophy, which is bound to common phenomena and thus restricts divine revelation. Yet

his appeal to the Eucharist, Benson claims, depends on the Aristotelian distinction between

substances and accidents.23 The problem is that the meaning of the Eucharist depends upon

both the upholding and suspension of what Benson describes as the human ‘logos’. The bread

and wine in the Eucharist must still be understood as bread and wine in one sense, but in

another sense they are not because not all bread and wine have the presence of the divine. In

the Eucharist they are different, but not totally different, because they could not be

interchanged with anything. Benson claims that Marion attempts to overcome this paradox by

appealing to a ‘third way’, which is an apophatic theology that proceeds by negating the

negation.24 The purpose of the third way is to resist both an immediate affirmation and an

immediate negation; on the grounds that these do not go far enough to properly grasp the

nature of God. Hence, Benson characterises Marion’s third way as insisting on a ‘pure call’.25

There are two potential problems with this notion of the pure call. One of these, which Benson

attributes to Derrida, is that the pure call actually may not be possible. However, this concern

is outside of the scope of this essay. The other is that the notion of the pure call makes an

implicit statement about common phenomena. Marion’s account of the third way is built on

an opposition between praise and predication, in which he argues that praise is fundamentally

different from predication.26 Benson objects that praise does in fact take the form of

predication, but that it can do so without completely destroying the meaning within

23

Bruce Ellis Benson, Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida & Marion on Modern Idolatry (Inter-Varsity Press,US, 2002), pp. 199–200. 24

Benson, pp. 206–7. 25

Benson, p. 208. 26

Jean-Luc Marion, ‘In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of “Negative Theology”’, in God, the gift, and postmodernism, ed. by John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 20–53 (pp. 29–30).


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revelation.27 Similarly, Graham Ward argues that Marion has too much of an exclusive

distinction between the gift and the economy of exchange; as Ward claims that it is only

possible for us to understand the gift through the economy of exchange. Ward also raises an

objection against Marion regarding the place of Biblical revelation in his thought. Ward argues

that, for Marion, Biblical revelation remains outside of Heidegger’s notion of ontological

difference, he writes; ‘biblical revelation is the hermeneutical key itself – here God is declared

to be indifferent to ontological difference’.28 This is a similar objection to Benson’s as it raises

the objection that a pure understanding of revelation might not be possible. The common

objection of Benson and Ward concerns how Marion divides between common phenomena

and saturated phenomena. This problem is evident in Marion’s work The Erotic Phenomenon,

which represents an ‘application’ of the theory of saturated phenomenon that he had already

developed.

The problem that concerns Marion in the phenomenology of Heidegger is that it does not

consider the other. He asks rhetorically: ‘How are we to reconcile the difference between two

beings with the difference between Being and a being?’29 Marion’s objection to Heidegger’s

ontological difference between Being and beings draws on the criticism of Heidegger made by

Emmanuel Lévinas (1906-95).

In Totality and Infinity, Lévinas argues that Heidegger subordinates the other to Being.

Heidegger’s concern with Being means that all relations come under this priority, which is also

a subjective orientation. The other has no special demands different to any other objects

within the world, hence Lévinas writes that ‘the Heideggerian ontology affirms the primacy of

27

Benson, pp. 221–3. 28

Graham Ward, ‘The Theological Project of Jean-Luc Marion’, in Post-secular philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 229–39 (p. 235). 29

Jean-Luc Marion, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1998), p. 127.


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freedom over ethics’.30 Heidegger’s account of beings and Being is primarily oriented at objects

in the world, which means that they are not valued as other subjects. The only subject that is

present is the first person, which Lévinas thinks distorts the ethical relationship between

people. Against this, he argues that the ethical relationship to the other precedes its

ontological status. In other words, Lévinas proposes that recognising the other should be one’s

ultimate concern rather than conceiving of the other as one among many beings in the world.

Following Lévinas, Marion argues that Heidegger’s resolution only concerns two different ways

of Being for beings. One of these concerns Dasein belonging in existence, and the other

concerns the thing in the world. Similarly, the ontological difference between beings and Being

does not recognise the other as having concerns different from ordinary objects in the world.

In Totality and Infinity, Lévinas does not deny that the other can be both a being and

participate as a being in Being. The ethical relation to the other disrupts the

comprehensiveness, which Heidegger claims for the question of being: ‘in entering into

relation with something other, this relation does not take form on the plane of pure being’.31

Thus he merely makes the claim that the question of Being should not be the primary concern

when considering the other.

In contrast to Lévinas, Marion claims that the call of the other, that arises before the question

of Being, effaces all conceptualisation, including the question of Being. Thus, with respect to

the erotic relation, he states: ‘The search for a concept must therefore describe the erotic

phenomenon in its own proper horizon—that of a love without being’.32 In Being Given, there

is a more extensive discussion of the argument against the priority of being. Pure givenness

within saturated phenomena is not immediately given as already an object or, in other words,

it is given without being. He argues this from the example of the painting, which, when it is

30

Emmanuel Lévinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007), p. 45. 31

Italics in original. Lévinas, pp. 112–3. 32

Italics in original. Marion, The Erotic Phenomenon, p. 6.


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completed by the painter, is recognised as greater than the artist’s intention. There appears to

be something excessive to the painting than the totality of its parts, the painting as an object

of the artist’s intention and so forth.33 It is this extra element that does not seem to be

contained within our conception of what a painting is that Marion describes as its pure

givenness.

Marion’s account of givenness is pure without the presence of objects but saturated

phenomena are both based in common phenomena and revealing of givenness. It is only

givenness that distinguishes saturated phenomena from common phenomena. However,

Marion posits givenness as the universal condition of all phenomena, both unsaturated and

saturated. Benson summarises the object: ‘all phenomena are “saturated” phenomena in that

they cannot be fully experienced, comprehended or classified’.34 Effectively, the universal

givenness of phenomena means that even poor phenomena could be grasped as having

intuition exceeding concepts. Applied to revelation, it presents a natural theology in which

everything has the capacity for natural knowledge of God and in the style of Brunner, the task

of the phenomenologist is simply to raise the capacity of people to recognise the excess

intuition within phenomena. The other effect is that saturated phenomena could no longer be

considered as a special category because any phenomenon could be elevated to the level of

saturation.

However, it can be responded that the universal givenness of phenomena does not create

universal revelation because of the distinction between hiding and disclosure. The distinction

between saturated phenomena and poor phenomena is not so much the amount of content

within the phenomenon but the way in which content can be revealed as higher than

concepts. Marion gives two reasons why we do not commonly notice the limited nature of

poor phenomena. Firstly, in the majority of cases we consider the lack of intuition is not

33

Marion, Being given, pp. 51–2. 34

Benson, p. 220.


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noticeable. Part of this evasion occurs through the deferral in the sciences that unexplained

phenomena will eventually be explained.35 Secondly, Marion claims it is difficult to recognise

saturated phenomena because most of our culture requires the minimum of intuition, which

means that intuition could never undermine the authority of concept.36 These resistances to

saturated phenomena mean that we cannot derive saturated phenomena by beginning with

poor phenomena. We can only have a complete understanding of poor phenomena if we

appreciate the pure givenness of phenomena, which consequently directs us through the

analysis of saturated phenomena. The resistances to recognising saturated phenomena mean

that the purity of givenness within saturated phenomena becomes a superfluous hypothesis.

The givenness within saturated phenomena need not be uncontaminated by poor phenomena

but only needs to be greater than the resistance in the use of concepts. Therefore a saturated

phenomenon does not need to be a pure phenomenon.

.

Conclusion: the Phenomenological Basis of Revelation

The issue of purity in Marion’s notion of saturated phenomena is applicable to Barth’s account

of revelation. The problem with Barth’s reading of Heidegger was that he could not conceive

how phenomenology could be related to revelation. By giving up on the purity of saturated

phenomena it became evident that the problem with poor phenomena did not lie in its limited

content but in the domination of this content through conceptualisation. The problem with

Heidegger’s conception of the nothing was not, as Barth claimed, that it had no relation to

Christian revelation but that it did not contain enough for Christian revelation. The difference

is that Heidegger’s argument could contain much of what is in Christian revelation rather than

having to be completely irrelevant to it. Similarly common phenomena do have the content of

saturated phenomena without overcoming the domination of concepts. Marion has shown

35

Marion, Being given, pp. 222–3. 36

Marion, Being given, p. 223.


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that revelation can have a basis in some types of phenomena without having to concede that

all phenomena can reveal the created order. In contrast, Barth’s account of revelation is more

restrictive and does not allow for any significant non-Christian input in revelation. The problem

with this latter approach was revealed in his engagement with Heidegger, which although

explicitly strongly opposed to the theological significance of Heidegger’s thought, it was

implicitly shown to be closer than Barth had envisaged. Marion’s notion of saturated

phenomena can account for this case on the grounds that there is some givenness in

Heidegger that can be used in revelation but it is not sufficient to produce revelation.


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Bibliography

Barth, Karl, Church Dogmatics, Study ed. (London: T & T Clark, 2009), I.1

———, Church Dogmatics, Study ed. (London: T & T Clark, 2009), III.3

———, Evangelical Theology: An Introduction (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1963)

———, Karl Barth - Eduard Thurneysen Briefwechsel: 1921-1930, ed. by Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, 5 (Zürich: Theolog. Verl., 1974)

———, Karl Barth - Rudolf Bultmann Briefwechsel: 1911-1966, ed. by Hinrich Stoevesandt, Karl Barth Gesamtausgabe, 1 (Zürich: Theolog. Verl., 1981)

———, ‘No! Answer to Karl Brunner’, in Natural theology: comprising ‘Nature and Grace’, by Emil Brunner and Karl Barth (London: Geoffrey Bles, The Centenary Press, 1946)

Benson, Bruce Ellis, Graven Ideologies: Nietzsche, Derrida & Marion on Modern Idolatry (Inter-Varsity Press,US, 2002)

Heidegger, Martin, ‘What Is Metaphysics?’, in Basic writings from Being and time (1927) to The task of thinking (1964), ed. by David Farrell Krell, Rev. and expanded ed. (London: Routledge, 1993)

Lévinas, Emmanuel, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. by Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2007)

Marion, Jean-Luc, Being given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness, trans. by Jeffrey Kosky (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2002)

———, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. by Robyn Horner and Vincent Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004)

———, ‘In the Name: How to Avoid Speaking of “Negative Theology”’, in God, the gift, and postmodernism, ed. by John D. Caputo and Michael J. Scanlon (Bloomington, Ind: Indiana University Press, 1999), pp. 20–53

———, Reduction and Givenness: Investigations of Husserl, Heidegger, and Phenomenology (Evanston, Ill: Northwestern University Press, 1998)

———, The Erotic Phenomenon (Chicago; London: University of Chicago Press, 2007)

McNassor, John H, Revelation and Phenomenology in the Christologies of Karl Barth and Jean-Luc Marion: A Case Study in Theological Method (Ann Arbor, MI: Proquest, Umi Dissertation Publishing, 2011)

Moore, Andrew, ‘Theological Critiques of Natural Theology’, in The Oxford Handbook of Natural Theology, ed. by Russell Re Manning, John Hedley Brooke, and Fraser Watts (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013)

Oakes, Kenneth, Karl Barth on Theology and Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012)


17

Ward, Graham, ‘The Theological Project of Jean-Luc Marion’, in Post-secular philosophy (London: Routledge, 1998), pp. 229–39

Documents

Phenomenology_of_Revelation. the Disclosure of Revelation in Karl Barth's Theology and Jean-Luc Marion's Topology of Phenomena