The End of Theology

American Academy of Religion
The End of Theology

Author(s): Carl A. Raschke
Source: Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Jun., 1978), pp. 159-179
Published by: Oxford University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1462219 .
Accessed: 10/02/2015 10:20
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Oxford University Press and American Academy of Religion are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve
and extend access to Journal of the American Academy of Religion.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 176.12.107.140 on Tue, 10 Feb 2015 10:20:54 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
Journal of the American Academy of Religion, XLVI/2, 159-179
The End of Theology

Carl A. Raschke
ABSTRACT
In this article I argue that we have arrived at the "end"of theology. By
the "end"of theology I do not mean that theological reflection and inquiry as
an academic undertaking has abruptly ceased, or that it will not persevereas
a widespread occupation in the foreseeable future, but simply that significant
theological discussions in the familiar sense have been cut loose from their
historical and metaphysical moorings, which have rotted away. The article
attempts to analyze the dilemma of theology from the standpoint of the crisis
of Western thought as a whole, especially in light of the radical verdict
concerning the "end"of the Graeco-Christianmetaphysical tradition that has
been enunciated in the past century by Nietzsche and, more strictly, by
Heidegger. However, the essay seeks to confront the exhaustion of the
genuine possibilities for theologizing in a broader systematic and
philosophical manner than was offered by the death-of-God movement
during the previous decade.
The line of argument draws heavily on the insights of the later
Heidegger, but does not merely "apply" Heidegger to a conventional set of
theological issues. The radical character of Heidegger's philosophy has been
unfortunately slurred over by contemporary theologians, and thus a
"Heideggerian"theology is no more cogent than a squaring of the circle.
Heidegger contends that Western thinking has always been "onto-theological" in nature. He calls for the "overcoming" of ontotheology, which at
the same time implies the transcendence of theology as a discipline. The
transcendence of theology amounts to a passage beyond the traditional
manner whereby theological thinking has been concerned with the ens
realissimum and has based its deliberations on a particular metaphysics of
language that serves to re-present the divine as an object for a subject, or as
the transcendental subject. Heidegger holds that the end of metaphysics
corresponds to the collapse of the subject-object division in thought along
with the removal of the grounds of metaphysical certitude implicit in the
thinking of this division. The Cartesian revolution shifted the foundations of
certitude from that of the "constant presence" of the metaphysical object to
Carl A. Raschke is Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Director of
Graduate Studies at the University of Denver. He is author of Moral Action, God and
History in the Thought of Immanuel Kant, and coauthor of Religion and the Human
Image. Two other books, The Interruption of Eternity and The Breaking of New
Wineskins, are scheduled for publication in 1978.

Carl L. Raschke
160
the self-validationof the subjectas arbiterof truth,impliedin the cogito.

Modernempiricismtranslatedthe Cartesiancogitointo whatI havetermed
distinctionentailedin
the experior.But it still keptintactthe subject-object
theologico-metaphysicalpoint of view, with the frame of referencefor
talkingabout changingto reflectionon the structuresof consciousness,a
position Heideggerdubs "subjectist."
The article concludes with a review of some samples of recent
theological writing, includingthat of David Tracy, Louis Dupre, and
WolfhartPannenburg,in orderto illustrateHeidegger'ssuggestionsabout
the careerof theology.It alsoinquiresaboutwhatmightlie beyondthe"end"
of theology, and considers what Heidegger means by thinking the
"unthought"as the "veiledarrival"of a new presenceof divinity in the
aftermathof God'sdeath.
We nevercome to thoughts.Theycome to us.

-Martin Heidegger
ave we reached the end of theology? The question, if it does not

perplex us, at least rankles. How is it possible to speak of the end of
theology when the business of theologizing still thrives in the
emporium of Western culture-among churchmen and academics alike?
Certainly the propagation of "theological" books, not to mention the
multifarious "theologies" of such-and-such (e.g., theology of play, theology
of women, liberation theology, etc.) would seem to attest to the perduranceof
the occupation. Whoever blazons theology's "end"is apt to be singled out and
be numbered among those familiar critics who bemoan the passing of the last
generation of great systematic theologians and the consequent rise of a
cacaphony of popularizers and special pleaders, or among those who hawk
some kind of mystical or purely experiential alternative to traditional "Godtalk"/ 1/. But the end of theology signifies an historical eventuality which runs
deeper than either style or subject matter. The end of theology springs from
the crisis of Western thinking as a whole-from the way in which the highest
object of thought, God, is represented and from the character of the subject
who does the representing.
Nevertheless, by the "end"of theology we do not necessarily mean simply
the termination, or even the actual demise, of the kind of reflective activity
which has been plied by theologians in the Occident for centuries. An equable
quality of labor toward theological clarification and inquiry will undoubtedly
persist in various forms and guises, from time to time sparking new "insights"

The End of Theology
161
concerning the vocation of theologians. But such activity may be described in

terms of the familiar metaphor from Indian literature with respect to the
continuation of the effects of karma: the potters wheel goes on spinning from
its own momentum, despite the fact the potter himself has released his foot
from the treadle. Theologians will continue to theologize even though the
customary impetus for theological work has been scotched. The end of
theology, therefore, refers not to the cessation of theological activity, but to
the onset of a fundamental questioning of the raison d'etre for what
historically has been known as "theology."
When we talk about the "end" of theology, of course, we are using the
word in its double-edged sense. The word "end" (as in the German Ende)
connotes not just a terminus, but a completion or fructification of an aim (cf.
the German Endzweck). Thus the end of theology implies, inter alia, the
consummation of a particular track of development within the Christian
history of the West. In addition, the end of theology is related to the rounding
out of other signal trends within the Western historical epoch.
As may be obvious to some by now, the expression "end of theology" is
integrally associated with the phenomenon which Martin Heidegger has
tabbed the "end of philosophy" in our age. And we shall appeal in large extent
to Heidegger's own metahistorical analysis in determining how both Western
philosophy and theology share a common destiny / 2/. On the other hand, it is
not merely our intention to "apply" Heidegger as a resource for definitive
theological problem. The later Heidegger, in particular, has been respectfully
cited and appropriated by certain religious thinkers during the past decade or
so as a frame of referencefor essaying a theological hermeneutic of the "Word
of God" / 3/. The issues raised by Heidegger, however, call into question both
the topics and procedure of "theologizing" with the same force as it jars the
foundations of current philosophical objectives and methods. The end of
theology, together with the end of philosophy, derives from the "end"or final
realization of what Heidegger has termed "objectifying"or "representationalcalculative" thinking. Specifically, such an end is the "place in which the
whole of philosophy's history [and we might add that of theology as well] is
gathered in its most extreme possibility" (1972:57). The end of theology can be
"placed"with the end of philosophy as a correlative manifestaton of the end of
Western thinking in what Heidegger has delineated as its historical,
"metaphysical" mode. But, before we examine the signs of theology's
"ending" that are evident today, we must review the general project of
Heidegger's own thought which he has designed at the "overcoming
[Uberwindung] of metaphysics."
II
As soon as he had written his magnum opus Sein und Zeit, Heidegger
envisaged the primary objective of his thought as the "overcoming" of
metaphysics (cf. Mehta: 34). But why does metaphysics need to be overcome?

Carl L. Raschke
162
According to Heidegger, "metaphysicsis a name for the pivotal point and core
of all philosophy" (1969: 14). Metaphysics is the ancient science which asks
the fundamental question about Being, about the "ground"or ultimate reason
for "beings" (Seienden) as they appear in the world /4/. Yet, ever since the
early Greeks, who first cultivated the science, metaphysics has been concerned
exclusively with questions of "physics"/ 5/ ratherthan the primordial "meta-"
question which, for Heidegger, penetrates to the "essence" of metaphysics
itself. The essence of metaphysics gives hint of itself in the fundamental
ontological question: Warum ist iiberhaupt Seiendes und nicht vielmehr
Nichts ("Why are there, in general, beings rather than nothing?"). The
question brings to light the basic dilemma of ontology-that beings are not
just "there," but that they emerge from somewhere else. They cannot
ultimately be understood by reference to other beings, or the highest being or
the abstract and indeterminate concept of being-as-a-whole /6/, but only
through Being as it is concealed within the appearance of beings to the degree
that it appears to be "Nothing" (or no-thingness). Being is always distinct
from any being, or totality of beings, a state of affairs which Heidegger
designates the "ontological difference." Yet the ontological difference "as
difference" is that which has not been properly thought by metaphysics, which
instead has busied itself with discovering the Being of beings, the ontos on, the
being which has being "to the highest degree" (1962: 248). In short,
metaphysics has not thought the "unity of its essence," or the genuine
relationship between beings and Being, a unity which has remained
"unthought" (Ungedacht) at the same time it has been "forgotten."
Metaphysics has made a being out of Being; it has turned Being into theprotos
arche, the "first principle," the sufficient reason, the primum mobile, or
"God." Thus Heidegger speaks of the "onto-theological" character of
metaphysical thinking, which is the foundation of all Western thinking,
including philosophy, science, and theology. The overcoming of metaphysics
amounts to a thorough rethinking of the essence of thinking itself, which in
the long range constitutes the most compelling assignment of our age.
"Onto-theology," or metaphysics, rests on a particular way of thinking
that has gained ascendancy for Western man and is responsible for his current
amnesia toward Being, evidenced in the end of philosophy and theology
together. This way of thinking Heidegger for the most part calls
"representational"(vorstellend). Representational thinking is not so much a
falsification of reality as a "limitation"in human experience which acquires an
unconditional character. Historically, representationalthinking was spawned
out of philosophy's original conceptualization of Being as constrained by the
prevailing paradigms of logic and grammar inscribed in the structure of the
Greek language. For Heidegger, representation consists in a re-praesentatio
whereby a thing is "presented"as a "what" in "its sameness and constancy"
(1973: 60). This re-presentation is a movement of logical thought (i.e., thought
as praedicatio, as judgment, as determination of a "what") away from the
immediate revelation of the being in its primitive manifestation, a
manifestation which Heidegger describes as simple "presence"(German =

The End of Theology
163
Anwesenheit, Greek = ousia). But it is only such a "presencing"which gives

rise to representation, since for a being to be "present"means that it has lost its
incidental and fugitive quality and appears as something "fixed" or
"permanent"(stdndig). "Standing forth" in its fixity, therefore, the being is
capable of being re-presented in thought. It is found "ready-made" as "a
datum"which can be utilized as a concept or sign for theoretical purposes, and
can be manipulated in a practical manner in accordance with the needs or
interests of the human subject (1969: 52). In a word, it becomes an "object"
which "stands over against" (Gegen-stand) the subject who poses as its master
/7/. Representational thinking becomes "calculative"in its use and comes to
serve the subjective will to dominance over the entities of nature. Only so far
as beings are abstracted in conceptual analysis from their essential origin
(what Heidegger terms their "belonging-together-with") in Being, can they
become inventory for manipulation and willful activity. Representational or
"objectifying"thinking requires that oneforget the "essence"(das Wesen in
the sense of a verb, the "beingness"or unfolding of "being"as a process) of the
beings with which one deals. Metaphysics comprises the primordial event of
forgetfulness, inasmuch as Being comes to be representednot as the essence of
beings, but as the "highest being," the ens realissimum et perfectissimum.
Metaphysics subsists as the cornerstone of "theology" proper.
By Heidegger's account metaphysics is the seedbed of both theology and
science (and by extension technology), for both theology and science rely on
the stabilization and computation of beings as objects. Theology and science
arise from the ancient speculations of the pre-Socratic philosophers, who
were the first to conceive metaphysics as a search for the "being"which would
explain the existence of other beings, as a quest for the supreme "cause" or
archP. Aristotle, for example, in the Metaphysics, describes Thales,
Anaximander, and the other Greek "scientists"as individuals engaged in the
activity of "theologizing" (theologein) /8/. Theology and science are
concerned with explicating the objective data of the world. In the Christian
era theology developed as the "science"of God (God being understood as the
Creator or Supreme Cause of the universe) /9/; whereas what is now
understood strictly as "science" came to be the method of inquiry into the
proximate causes of phenomena as they are "objectively"constituted within
the natural order. In both cases the question of Being retreated,enabling man
to occupy himself with the reckoning and determination of objects according
to their principles and causes.
Representational thinking in its theological and scientific applications
also revised, according to Heidegger, the notion of "truth." Truth in its
primordial sense is aletheia ("unconcealedness," literally "unforgetfulness"),
the disclosure of Being through the presencing of beings. Truth is therefore a
"letting things be in totality" (1949: 313), a "preserving"(for Heidegger, the
original meaning of Wahrheit) what is as it is in its very essence. Heidegger
contrasts truth as aletheia with "the conventional concept" which grows out of
the representational thinking of metaphysics. In the latter instance truth is
regarded as "propositional truth," which "is only possible on the basis of

Carl L. Raschke
164
objective truth, the adequatio rei ad intellectum" (1949: 292). Objective or

propositional truth is not revelatory, but grammatical, insofar as it is
established in keeping with the syntactical relationships between terms and
the objects to which they are supposed to refer. Objective truth hinges on the
way in which beings "are"in their relationship to other beings, as "laid down"
(legein) by the "logic" of propositions. Science, Heidegger says, depends for
its deductive explanations on these logical relationships, but so does theology
for that matter. The principal difference is that historically theology has
posited God, rather than nature, as the the provenance of these relationships,
and stipulates the intellectus divinus instead of the intellectus humanus as that
to which the "thing" or object must be "adequate" (1949: 296) /10/.
The task of representational thinking, Heidegger asserts, is the
achievement of certainty, an end implicit in the effort at securing the
permanence of the object. Certainty can be reached only when thinking dwells
not on the "matter"(Sache) of thought, but on the representations of thought,
which occur as signs along with their taxonomy and rules of use, in other
words, the structural properties of language. Truth becomes "grammatical"
/11/ and can be accorded certainty through codification of the affinities
between signs. By this account thought turns to "logic"-the primary method
of ascertaining truth in Western philosophy-which at bottom is simply
"thought about thinking" (1969: 21), rather than the "essence"of thinking, or
thinking itself. But whatever certainty is established in the mapping of logical
or representational truth-functions can be no more than a subjective
certainty, or self-certainty. Objective truth turns out to be subjective truth,
since the truth perceived about the object depends on the certitude which the
subject elicits in appealing to its own sufficiency of representation and to the
self-evidence of its own categories of language and thought. All testing of
language necessitates fabrication of an apodictic meta-language (a formalized
organon) which draws its authority from the human desire for precision and
freedom from the ambiguity of mutual expressions.
Heidegger traces the transition in Western thought from the recognition
of truth as aletheia to truth as "certainty."This transition, Heidegger writes,
proceeds apart with the development of Western metaphysics, yet
paradoxically "is an event whose beginning is inaccessible to all metaphysics"
(1973: 20). Through metaphysics man loses sight of his primal relationship
with Being, yet at the same time obtains "assurance of himself" and "the
assurance of absolute dominance." Objects of cognition appear, but strictly as
objectsfor subjects which are certain of the criteria for their judgments. The
object emerges first in its durability and calculability as the Greek
hypokeimenon which gets translated into Latin as substans and means the
same as subiectum. Initially, the subiectum does not refer to what modern
philosophy terms the "subject," but to the "object"-what endures and is
"essential," the subject of the "subject-predicate relationship" (1973: 21).
Subjects or "substances" (i.e., objects) are thought to be the irreducible
features of reality, which "underlie" all phenomenal changes. Metaphysics
endeavored to comprehend these irreducible elements and, especially, to

The End of Theology
165
determine the ultimate character of substance, which Spinoza showed to be

the proper designation for God. The identity of the subiectum (as "substance"
or "object") as "subject" in the modern sense of the word was laid bare by
Descartes with his cogito ergo sum. "The ego, the res cogitans, is the
distinctive subiectum whose esse . . suffices for the essence of truth in the
sense of certainty" (1973: 29). Subjectivity as self-certainty arises as the
epistemological linchpin of modern scientific objectivity /12/. And the
genuine implications of the cogito as the certification of objective knowledge
are finally played out in the philosophy of Hegel, especially in his Science of
Logic, for whom "certainty is self-consciousness in its self-knowledge" / 13/.
The genuine meaning of the subject in any act of predication is the selfreflective "subject" of all thought, the Cartesian ego taken up into the
manifoldness of self-knowledge that Hegel calls the Absolute / 14/. In Hegel's
thought "science" and "logic" are ways of describing the certainty of
completed self-knowledge, which has gathered into itself the truth of all
"representations" (Vorstellungen) or objects / 15/.
But there is a second historical factor in the movement of metaphysics
toward the self-certainty of science, which Heidegger ascribes to the
standpoint of Christiantheology. Christian theology takes "faith"as its object
(1976: 11); but faith really implies the self-legitimation of the subject. "In faith
rules certainty, that kind of certainty which is safe even in the uncertainty of
itself, that is, of what it believes in" (1973:23). It is "certainty as selfguaranteeing (willing oneself)," or in other words,
iustitiaas the justificationof the relationto beingsand of theirfirst
cause .. . ustificatioin the senseof the ReformationandNietzsche's
conceptof justice as truthare the same thing. (1973:97)
The genesis of the autonomous rationality of Descartes' cogito in the free selfdetermination of Christian faith is brought out in a passage from Hegel,
whose view of philosophy as the realization of Absolute Spirit signals the
ultimate metaphysical synthesis of science and theology.
In the ChristianreligionI amto retainmyfreedom,orrather,in it
I am to becomefree. In it the subject,the salvationof the soul, the
redemptionof theindividualas an individual,andnot onlythespecies,
is an essentialend. This subjectivity,this selfness(not selfishness),is
just the principleof rationalknowledgeitself. (1970: 143,emphasis
mine)
Faith as self-authentication is transformed into the touchstone of rational
certainty, since truth is tantamount, as Hegel discovered, to the reflective selfunfoldment of the subject as the "notion" (1929: vol. ii: 234 ff.). German
idealism, therefore, stands as the historical fulfillment under the rubric of
"logic" and "science"of Christian subjectivity. It is theology in its "extreme,"
secular phase of development. Theology stands on the principle of
subjectivity, which in the final summation accords man as "the measure of all
things." Theology not only becomes anthropology, as Feuerbach proclaimed,

Carl L. Raschke
166
but foreshadows the very apotheosis of the human individual, who arrogates
for himself the role of God as the absolute subiectum, as First Cause. The
"objectivity" of reason is at last unmasked as bare self-willing. Hegel is
succeeded by Nietzsche, for whom the absolute ground of certainty is nothing
but "the will to Power" / 16/. In Nietzsche the primacy of the subject as the
source of "truth" is unconditionally and unblushingly affirmed. Thus
Heidegger speaks of Nietzsche as the "last" Western metaphysician. In the
same vein Nietzsche, notwithstanding his protestations of God's death, can
also be considered the last theologian.
In short, theology by Heidegger's reckoning constitutes one facet of the
devolution of metaphysics as part of "the fatefulness of Being." Theology
serves as one of the guarantors of representational thinking by preserving
through the concept of "faith"the apodicity of the subject. Science safeguards
the steadfastness and fungibility of "objects" which can be relativized,
quantified, and "explained" in keeping with hypotheses, formulas, and
statistical laws. The "end"of metaphysics in the modern world is visible in the
preemption of philosophy by science. Philosophy, which once subsisted in a
unity with metaphysics and scientific thinking, now passes over into science in
its modern technological form. "The end of philosophy proves to be the
triumph of the manipulable arrangement of a scientific-technological world
and of the social order proper to the world" (1972: 59). But the technoscientific spirit at the same time emanates from the same historical forces
which undergirded Christian subjectism. Christian theology is the
precondition, according to Heidegger, for the "process of secularization"
(1970: 147). Christian theology erects the scaffolding for the truthfulness of
subjective will, for the apprehension of Being as "reality in the sense of
indubitable representations"which Heidegger dubs "self-willing"or the "will
to will" (1973: 48). Without the achievement of subjective certitude,
technology as the historical culmination of man's forgetfulness of Being for
the sake of managing and controlling the items of his world would not have
been possible. Modern science and technology are not so much Greek in
origin as they are Christian /17/. The end of philosophy coincides with the
end of theology; for the fates of both philosophy and theology are entwined
with the larger realization of metaphysical-representational thinking in our
technological world culture. Frequently Heidegger speaks of the
contemporary period as the "atomic age," not just with reference to the
obvious fact of the harnessing of nuclear energy, but also as an allusion to the
atomization of human experience concurrent with the drive toward
technological dominance. The pure representation of existing things by
modern thought enables man to shape the world as completely amenable to
his will and thus gain total power over it. Thus, Heidegger comments,
technology arises as "the metaphysics of the atomic age" (1960: 48). Science
and technology succeed in atomizing and conquering the universe of entities,
theology in isolating as the bare subiectum the human subject by severing it
from its ontological foundations. The overcoming of metaphysics amounts to
the transcendence of onto-theology, whether it poses as "objectivist"science
or the "subjectism"[Subjectitat] inherent in theology.

The End of Theology
167
III
The plight of twentieth century theology, therefore, is inextricably

wrapped up with the historical event which Nietzsche dubbed the "death of
God." It should be remembered in this connection that by God's "death"
Nietzsche did not mean the vanishing of "belief" in God so much as the
replacement of man's traditional worship of the Deity as Creator and source
of values with an apotheosis of the subjective will, which "revaluesall values."
One need only note the words of Nietzsche's madman:
"Whitheris God?"he cried;"Iwilltell you. Wehavekilledhim-you
and I. All of us are his murderers."
(1974: 181)
The "death of God" ensues with the unacknowledged act of "murder,"which
for Nietzsche signified a final affirmation of Western man's subjective truth,
his Will to Power. In Heidegger'sterms the death of God betokens the coup de
main of representational thinking, the confirmation of the subject as arbiter,
orderer, and governer of a universe of pliable objects. On the religious level
God's demise is the triumph of secularity; and it is no wonder that the "death
of God" theology of the 1960s distinguished itself by celebrating what
Bonhoeffer called man "come of age," the metamorphosis of homo
religiousus into homo agens ("man the doer"), the translation of selfdistancing reverence for the divine into a theology of action and will. By
endorsing Nietzsche's declaration of God's death, theology thereby allied
itself self-consciously with the subjectivist ideology, which according to
Heidegger entails the ripening or "end" of Western metaphysics altogether.
However, the passing of the overt forms of"death-of-God" and "secular"
theologies, which crested during the climate of political activism in the late
Sixties, has not at the same time spelled any major shift away from the
subjectivist emphasis. The more recent attempt to anchor theological
reflection in various modes of contemporary religious "experience" simply
illlustrates a further advance of the earlier tendency. Theology in the 1970s,
while eschewing the patently secularist or political agendas of the last decade,
has still gauged its labors by the plumbline of subjective certitude. Instead of
extolling particular social or cultural aims as the prius of theological
interpretation, it has sought to craft a hermeneutic based on the selfevidencing states of consciousness of contemporary secular men and women,
especially the more "irrational"or "ecstatic"kinds. Descartes' cogito has been
superseded by the latter day experior.
A review of some of the more noteworthy theological writings which
have appeared in the last ten years will underscore this trend. It is impossible,
of course, within the scope of this essay to examine fully the complex
arguments found in these various works. But the common thread which runs
thoroughout them is a claim that the starting point of future theological
investigation must be an assessment of the experiential data of contemporary
selfhood.
To begin with, we may consider the position laid out in a widely discussed

168
Carl L. Raschke
book by David Tracy, Blessed Rage for Order. Tracy's book is an ambitious
effort to chart a "revisionist theology" which confers a new depth of meaning
on traditional religious symbols and theological constructs by fleshing out the
fundamental modes of experience that coalesce together in the modern
"pluralistcontext." As Tracy announces in this first chapter, such revisionism
endeavors to indicate those kinds of theological operations "which will be
appropriate to the central meaning of the secular faith we share and to the
central meanings represented in the Christian tradition" (14). The "adequate
criteria" for doing this sort of theology are specific "representativefacts" of
history and culture (i.e., enduring myths and symbols from our Western
religious legacy) which can be somehow brought into mediation by "critical
correlation"with the meanings ascribed to our present experience of ourselves
as beings in the world. Theology thus consists in an ongoing "hermeneutic"
which adopts as its touchstone not the "original" or primordial meanings
supposedly locked in the cultural facts, but the consistent structures of
contemporary secular (and, by extension, "religious")self-understanding, or
in another sense "the genuine values of modernity" such as "openness,"
"autonomy," and "change" (175). The business of theology is not to come up
with a transcendental guide for life in the world, but "really to make our
Christian self-understanding meaningful in our own life styles and our own
reflection" (177). The canons of "meaningfulness," as well as "truth" for
theological deliberation, according to Tracy, are "the 'conditions of the
possibility' of the experiencing self in its full multi-dimensional radicality"
(173-74). Tracy confirms Heidegger's diagnosis of the subjectivist revolution
in modern thought when he insists that theology must follow the "turn to the
subject" characterizing modern metaphysics by concentrating on our
"primary experience of ourselves." The theologian's use of the tradition
compasses no more than adjudicating "how and why such past meanings
either are or are not meaningful and true [we might add, "for our experience']
today" (240).
Another book which recurs to the experior in order to cement a new
foundation for theology is Louis Dupre's Transcendental Selfhood. Dupre
wants to go beyond a hermeneutic of secular consciousness, even one which
takes into its purview the "religious" or ecstatic dimension of such
consciousness, and find a pure region of "transcendence"within which one
can trace a framework of meaning for both past and present. As the title of his
book intimates, Dupre locates such a region of transcendence in the "self"not the everyday, conscious self to be sure, but the "immortal"self which is the
matrix of the mystical experience. Such a self-the one apprehended in total
"inwardness" which the classical mystics named the "soul"-surpasses the
given, empirical self of simple subjectivity and exists as the ganglion of a
special kind of "experience" which contrasts with ordinary ego-awareness.
Yet Dupre's ultimate self, as the Archimedean point of a new theological
articulation of sacred "experience," still represents the bare metaphysical
subiectum. It is interesting that Dupre criticizes Heidegger for having refined
the principle of subjectivity "without rethinking the content of the
determining subject"(6). For Dupre seems to misunderstand that it is the very

The End of Theology
169
critique of subjectivity which lies at the heart of Heidegger's prescription for

"overcoming" the onto-theological nature of metaphysics. Dupre, in fact,
pursues the subjectivist rendering of ontotheology to its logical limit, insofar
as he sets about to ground all theological positions in a revelation of the
transcendental self. His analytic of transcendental selfhood parallels some
recent efforts to ally theology with depth psychology, to postulate God as the
unity of the collective unconscious (e.g., cf. Miller; White). The identification
however, of God with transcendental selfhood, with the underlying source of
mystical experiences, merely succeeds in hypostasizing the transcendental
subject as the indwelling ground of reality as experience, much in the same
way classical metaphysics established the on e on or the "highest being"as first
cause of an objective universe. Dupre's intention to coordinate the selfdeclaration of faith with the language of the mystics simply raises to a higher
level of comprehension the theological experior.
A third, and highly insightful, work that requires consideration in this
context is Wolfhart Pannenberg's Theology and the Philosophy of Science.
Pannenberg undertakes in this lengthy and well documented exposition to
find a middle ground between the modern division of science as the method of
empirical truth-testing and theology as the self-elaboration of Christian faith.
Pannenberg cites "the disintegration of the traditional metaphysical doctrine
of God" and the tendency, preeminent in Neo-Orthodoxy, but still construed
in various degrees in other circles of postliberal thought, to mend the damage
by validating theological statements in terms of some privileged revelatory or
experential content. Theology's propensity to shun the objectivist
epistemology of modern science by qualifying its assertions as noncognitive
does nothing to justify the work of theological inquiry in the secular climate of
the twentieth century. Theology must be restored, Pannenberg insists, as "the
science of God," but not the same sort of science implicit in the natural
sciences. Rather, theology should follow the lead of Dilthey and the earlier
architects of the "human sciences" without falling into the quantificatory
pitfalls of the contemporary social sciences. Theology as the "science of God"
must occupy itself with a systematic and thematic account of all human
experience, sacred and profane, but with special attention to "religious
experience" which, for Pannenberg, involves "a form of explicit awareness of
the total meaning of reality" (333). At this level theology can still conserve
God as its central object, because God is "the all-determining reality"
immanent in the totality of finite reality and experience. Theology thus
defines itself as the "science of God," but only in the sense that is concerned
with the ground of human experience in its historical fullness. Theology
discloses God as the subiectum of human experience, yet without
specification of the individual subject. By appealing to religious experience in
particular, theology does more than legitimate the basic elements of meaning
in contemporary experience. For religious experience "anticipates" the
totality of human experience, future as well as past.
In fine, theology in Pannenberg's estimate remains "empirical," but it
also serves to enlarge the horizons of what counts as "experience."Experience

170
Carl L. Raschke
is more than the coherence of any individual or collective set of perceptions at

a particular historical moment, since it refers to unrealized future and
mediated past structures besides. Similarly, the organizing subject of
experience is not the individual agent of knowledge and volition, but the
divine "all-determining reality," the sufficient reason for the concrescence of
all subjective cognitions. In affirming God, theology secures an auxiliary
footing for its experior, just as Descartes relied on the notion of God to shore
up the certainty of his quod dare et distincte perciptur, resulting in the
notorious "Cartesian circle." But as in the case of Descartes' cogito, it is
actually the "indubitability" of the subjective experior, translated into the
notion of man as a res experiens, which provides the point of departure for
theologizing nowadays.
The crisis of contemporary theology, nevertheless, has to do with an
uneasiness concerning the alleged certitude of "experience." Modern
empiricism has always harbored within itself a hidden metaphysical agenda,
beginning with Locke's epistemological principle of sense impressions as the
building blocks of understanding. The irreducibility of the meaning-contents
of sense impressions (which the British empiricists called "simple ideas") was
later challenged by Kant, who located the formative process of human
experience in the synthesis of sense data and transcendental concepts in
conformance with the "unity of apperception." In the twentieth century the
contingency of empirical claims on the whole has been recognized profoundly
in the philosophy of science (e.g., cf. Popper; Kuhn) as well as in the literature
of post-Wittgensteinian philosophy, which has highlighted the interconnection between the "grammar"of the language we use and the makeup of
our experience /18/. It is the dependency of our means of empirical
verification on the "logic" or rules of predication peculiar to our language
which contends most seriously against the certitude of our experience. Just as
there cannot be any necessary priority given to the "experience" of secular
man, so experience itself cannot be considered the bedrock of knowledge,
since what is shaped as experience is in itself problematical. Indeed, the
theological appeal to "experience"is essentially an assertion of the primacy of
the language and forms of thought which have come to predominate in the
modern period. Theology thus betrays itself as an unwitting apologist for representational thinking in its final, subjectist phase. Theology today stands as
the living token of Nietzsche's prophecy that we have "killed"God, inasmuch
as it contrives its last defense by referringto the divine as an "object"that can
be re-presented and manipulated in accordance with the strictures of the
experiencing subject, or the teleology of the will. The disclaimer, for example,
of Gordon Kaufman, that God is not an "object" in the strict sense of an
available referent or "thing in itself," but an "imaginativeconstruct" adequate
to our contemporary needs and experiences /19/ simply makes selfconsciously explicit the historical fact that theology has come to be the selfprojection of the subject. Moving in the opposite direction of science,
theology has climaxed the reifying career of Western metaphysics by pinning
down the certitude of the subject as hypo-keimenon of all experience, and has

171
The End of Theology
deftly displaced God from the heavens into the world-conjuring agency of the
self.
A critic of a draft of this article has raised the objection that perhaps a fair
number of the theologians previously indicated are actually grappling in their
own fashion with the same dilemmas Heidegger outlines. The same critic also
questions whether theologians who do not grant Heidegger's premises can be
expected to make the kind of "Heideggerian"moves the article demands. The
second objection can be easily dispensed with, as it is rather fatuous.
Naturally, a partisan of realist metaphysics will predictably balk at the whole
twentieth century enterprise of ordinary language philosophy, but that does
not neutralize the critical advances of the latter method over the former.
Heidegger's views on theology are not apt to be easily metabolized, since they
are in themselves quite radical and discomforting. Contemporary theology
has too readily misrepresented Heidegger, either by making a straw man out
of him /20/, or by attenuating him so that conventional theological
"discourse" can invoke him as a muse for its deliberations /21/. The first
objection that contemporary theology and Heideggerian ontology have a tacit
kinship can only be upheld, therefore, if Heidegger is benignly domesticated.
Assuredly, contemporary theology has followed Heidegger in his dismissal of
the classical metaphysical conception of God as object. But contemporary
theology has not seen through his thorough critique of the metaphysical
prioritization of the subiectum. Indeed, it has remained spellbound by the
categories of thought appropriate to this "last" phase of the career of ontic
thinking. So long as theology clings to the need for the "idea" of God in the
traditional sense, even though it qualifies the status of this being as a
"representation," an "imaginative construct," or as a "symbol" of our
common experience, it persists in a crumbling allegiance to a thought
experience that has reached its closure. It is unlikely that theology is willing to
abjure this allegiance, since it would no longer be theology any more. But that
is the radical step of "crossing the line" (as Heidegger puts it) which the
overcoming of metaphysics (and pari passu the "end of theology") requires.
IV
But what might lie beyond the "end" of theology? Can theology be
reconstituted in some form that overreaches its historical collapse into the
bare experior? The quandary of theological self-scrutiny at present is coupled,
as we have maintained, with the terminal stage of Western metaphysics, which
in turn implies the exhaustion of the meaning of its representations. One
popular alternative to theology, at least in the religious domain, has been the
kind of ecstatic experimentalism and syncretism that turns away from all
normative traditions or determinate symbols and probes toward the
dissolution of language and thought in the mystical flight to the depths of the
mind. The force of such introvertive ecstasy depends on the quelling of the
ego-consciousness which merely functions according to one noted

172
172
Carl L. Raschke
psychologist, as a "data reduction system" that screens the massive flow of

impressions and schematizes them in concert with our linguistic and
conceptual (i.e., "logical") anticipations of reality (cf. Ornstein). Once the
data reduction process is minimized, or even eliminated, in the mystic leap,
the "truth" of all our experience is putatively fathomed within the cosmic
dimension. Mystical insight thus can be retailed as a therapy for the rigidities
of theological doctrine and threadbare piety.
Yet mysticism, or "religious experience" in some allegedly primordial or
preconceptual manifestation, can never suffice historically as a stand-in for
theology. Popular mysticism today is a symptom of the debility of religious
thought, not a cure. As Heidegger notes, irrationality and rationality are
merely different visages of the metaphysical Janus. The "overcoming" of
metaphysics demands not the abdication of thought, but a radical new kind of
thinking-a thinking that has heretofore been "unthought."Such "originative
thinking" must penetrate behind the the structures of onto-theological
thinking, which entails at once the transcendence of the subject-object
perspective or representational thought /22/.
The way into the "unthought"begins not with logic (not even theo-logic),
but with "thinking"in the truest sense of the word. For Heidegger, originative
"thought" (Denken) is "poetizing"(Dichten), which does not re-present Being
as it discloses itself, but "allows" what is to present itself in its most
"appropriate"fashion. Heidegger terms this act of "appropriation"Er-eignis,
which also means more loosely "event."Thought as poetizing is not an event
of speaking, but of being spoken through and to. Man does not "speak,"but is
"bespoken."The poet is one who "undergoes with language," inasmuch as he
is "properly concerned by the claim of language by entering into and
submitting to it" (1971a: 57). To undergo with language as Er-eignis requires
that one give up representational thinking and "hear" the word in its
originative power and meaning. And to free ourselves from representational
thinking requires at the same time the abnegation of subjective willing.
Heidegger speaks of "weaning ourselves away from will," which leads to "nonwilling" or, more precisely, to "releasement" (Gelassenheit), whereby our
subjective will no longer stands in the way of letting things be as they are. But
modern man finds it exceedingly difficult to curb his habit of willful thinking.
"Modern man ... is called the one who wills" (1971b: 148). He has become
the master of a manner of "thinking"which, "understood in a traditional way,
as re-presenting is a kind of willilng" (1966: 58). His "will to will" inhibits
authentic releasement, which keeps him from a direct stance toward the face
of Being that might reveal the very essence of the language he speaks. But, if he
is ever to think with all his being the unthought, he must learn to think
differently, and that thinking involves an unprecedented receptivity to the
creative word of poetry.
The call for poetic inspiration in the making of theology, of course, has
been alluded to in some recent literature. Amos Wilder has suggested a
"theopoetic," whereas the marriage of theology and "story" has also been
proposed (e.g., cf. Wiggins; Crossan). But a genuinely radical program of

The End of Theology
173
poetizing would embrace something more than finding dramatic or narrative

analogues in the contemporary setting for certain religious ideas. The
assimilation of what has heretofore been known as "theology" to literature
would be like squaring the circle. For both theology and literature must
ultimately draw their sustenance from a more profound and pre-thematic
disclosure of the world, one which both grips and overcomes man in his
essential condition. The dilemma of both theology and literature today is that
they seem to have lost touch with their own roots. Over a century and a half
ago Goethe wrote that "men continue to be creative in poetry and art only so
long as they are religious" / 23/. Yet the "religious"dimension, in the sense of
an unmediated and incalculable encounter with the very depths of life that is
not merely an "empirical" construct, has melted away in the facile
preoccupation with the forms of contemporary experience. Thus any
diversion toward a theo-poetic must prove vain, so long as the reunion with
poetry rests merely on a self-conscious and artificial method of correlation.
Theology instead must surrender its will to re-presentation to the primal
poetic, which in the strictest respect may be called "revelation"
On the other hand, any opening to revelation at a primordial level does
not at all mean the same as the earlier Barthian sacrificium intellectus for the
sake of "faith" in the Christian kerygma. As Heidegger notes, a
presuppositionless listening for the Word surpasses any deliberate attempt to
put an orthodox or formatively "Christian"stamp on such a revelation. Such
a theological enterprise would be simply another mode of re-presentational
thinking. Rather, the "way"of which we are speaking must be, in Heidegger's
terms, a "venture"back into the pre-Christian (which is at the same time a
post-Christian) meaning of our being-in-the-world. Heidegger remarks that
we must search out "the pre-Christian content of basic theological concepts"
(1976: 20). But such a searching points at the same time toward a wholly new,
and perhaps complete, manifestation of the truth as contained in the historical
Word. In the beginning resides the end, and in the end the beginning. Thus
Heidegger refers somewhat cryptically to the parousia (which is interestingly
the New Testament word for the Second Coming) of Being (1975: 18), which
implies the revelation of the ontological "perfection"or "completeness"of all
that is, the event of "being alongside" or encountering "face to face." The
reception of the parousia through the event of poetizing does not annul the
meaning-content of previous theologies, but consists in their final
"grounding"or "filling out." On the other hand, the reception of the parousia
does not allow (at least immediately) to begin blithely a "reconstruction" of
the theological task along Heideggerian lines. Heidegger cannot be used to
"do" theology, only to point up the radical limitations of the theological
undertaking. In their craze to legitimate their own trade theologians are
invariably quick to fetch philosophical support for their positions. But
Heidegger's philosophy does not reassure or support. "Meditative"
(andenkenden) thinking, which Heidegger prescribes, aims toward a
"listening"rather than a glib habit of "saying." It demands of the theologian
unconditional and fateful humility in his formulation of a response to the

174
Carl L. Raschke
holy, a humility which is perhaps too severe and taxing for theological
professionals to bear.
Heidegger writes that we live in the age of the "default" or "absence,"
rather than the final "death" of God. And he goes on:
But absenceis not nothing;ratherit is preciselythe presence,which
mustfirstbe appropriated,of the hiddenfullnessand wealthof what
has been and what, thus gathered,is presencing,of the divinein the
worldof the Greeks,in propheticJudaism,in the preachingof Jesus.
This no-longer is in itself a not-yet of the veiled arrival of its
inexhaustiblenature.(1971b:184)
The "veiled arrival" perhaps remains out of sight to the extent that we
theologians willfully cling to the mere form and not the substance of the
concepts that have been our guideposts for two thousand years. To go beyond
the form requires an act of "thinking"in the deepest sense of letting-be that
which is. "Few," Heidegger observes, "are experienced enough in the
difference between an object of scholarship and a matter of thought" (1971b:
5). Theology today has lost its "matter of thought" because it has become
estranged from the essential language through which bonafide thinking is
possible. Or, as Thomas J. J. Altizer observes in his most recent and
appreciably prophetic book:
Theology today is most fundamentallyin quest of a languageand
mode wherebyit can speak. Above all it is in quest of a language
wherebyit can speak of God. Ever increasinglyand decisivelythis
questis becominga questfor languageitself,andfora newlanguage,a
languagewherebywe can actuallyand fully speak.(1)
Theology, however, can only attain to such a language when it, instead of
clamoring to speak the word, lets the word be spoken.
NOTES
In the lattercase I havein minda bookby AlanWatts(1964).Watts'approach
/ /
is echoed in variousand sundrypopularor semi-popularwriters,such as Jacob
Needlemanor HarveyCox, who callfor a returnto primary"religiousexperience"in
placeof conventionaltheologicalstatements.
/2/
Heidegger,of course,evenin his laterwritings,neverdiscussessystematically
the"end"of theologywiththe sameattentionhe givesto philosophy.Heidegger's
own
remarksabout theologyare ratherscatteredand somewhatobscure(see his essay
"Phenomenologyand Theology"(1976)and his "Epilogue"to "TheThink"(1971b:
183-86). Nonetheless,the suggestionof the "end"of theology is clear in both his
criticismsof Westernphilosophyand his broaderdiscussionof the"onto-theological"
characterof metaphysics.

175
The End of Theology
The locus classicus for essays on the theological application of the later
/3/
Heidegger is the volume edited by James M. Robinson and John B. Cobb, Jr. There
are essays in German as well, which are too numerous to be cited. Another essay of
interest here is Heinrich Ott, "Hermeneutical and Personal Structure of Language,"
(169).
The term das Seiende ("being") is a technical word used by Heidegger that
/4/
cannot be straightforwardlytranslatedinto English. I have used the more conventional
translation "being," rather than the neologism "essent"devised by Ralph Mannheim
which seems to be preferred by Heidegger scholars, in order to avoid confusion for
readers not steeped in the subtleties of Heidegger's thought.
"From the very first 'physics' has determined the essence and history of
/5/
metaphysics" (1969:14).
The idea of Being as that which is most indeterminateand abstract is advanced
/6/
by Hegel: "Being is indeterminate immediacy" (1929: 93).
Cf. ". . . the beingness of beings is thought as presence for the guarantee of
/7/
representation. Beingness is now objectivity"("Overcoming Metaphysics"[ 1973:88]).
See, for example,
/8/
xii.6.1071b27, xiv.4.1091a34.
Aristotle,
Metaphysics
i.3.983b29,
iii.4.1000b,
For an interesting endeavor to revive the notion of theology as a "science,"see

/9/
Pannenburg (fn. 46).
The notion of the divine intellect as the touchstone of truth, of course, is most
/10/
fully elaborated in its modern version in the idealism of Bishop Berkeley.
The view of truth as grammatical, or dependent on syntax, was inspired, of
/ 1I/
course, by Wittgenstein, who saw verification as a function of the particular"language
game." For example, "the use of the words 'true' and 'false' may be among the
constituent parts of this [propositional] game" (1953: #136, p. 53e).
For a meticulous and exhaustive study of the principle of scientific certainty as
/12/
implicit in Descartes'cogito, see Caton. Caton does not discuss Husserl'sversion of the
cogito as the basis of scientific certitude.
/13/
Heidegger, 1970: 154. See also "For Hegel Philosophy is at hand only when the
self-thinking of absolute knowledge is reality itself, and simply is. The self-perfecting
elevation of Being into the thinking Spirit as absolute reality takes place in and as
speculative logic" (Heidegger, 1975: 83).
For an excellent analysis of the way in which Hegel determines the thinking
/14/
subject as the ground of certainty in "subject-predicate"language see Surber.
See Hegel's discussion of "absolute knowledge" in his Phenomenology of
/15/
Mind. "Thus, then, what was in religion content, or a way of imagining (Vorstellen) an
other, is here the action proper of the self. . . . For this notion is, as we see, the

Carl L. Raschke
176
knowledge of this Subject as Substance and of the Substance as this knowledge of its
action. . . . This last embodiment of spiriti-spirit which at once gives its complete
and true content the form of self ... is Absolute Knowledge" (1967: 797).
Cf. the last line of Nietzsche's The Willto Power (1967: 550): "Thisworld is the
/16/
will to power-and nothing besides!"
/17/
". . . the originally Greek nature of philosophy,
in the era of its modern-
European sway, has been guided and ruled by Christian conceptions" (1958: 31). A
thorough historical-cultural account of the way in which the Christian world view has
undergirded the Western techno-scientific spirit is Van Leeuwen.
Consider Wittgenstein's comment that "is what is linguistic not an
/18/
experience?" (1953: #649, 166e).
This position is laid out by Gordon Kaufman in his An Essay in Theological
/19/
Method.
Cf., for example, Tracy constantly stereotypes Heidegger, without ever doing
/20/
justice to him, as being "anti-technological," "anti-scientific," or as a carrier of "the
individualist tradition" (1975: 12, 243).
/21/
Heidegger, of course, himself warned against being used by theologians for
their own purposes. Some recent commentators have stressed the decisive separation
between Heidegger's ontological thinking and theology (See, for instance, Joseph
Kockelmans "Heidegger on Theology.") The most comprehensive study of the
relationship between Heidegger and theology, which ends up with the same verdict
(though not quite as strong a one) as Kockelmans', appeared a few years ago in
German. (See Annemarie Gehtmann-Siefert.)
/22/
Heidegger argues that the essential metaphysical problem transcends the
duality of subject and object, which becomes a unity in the disclosure of Being (1962:
171ff.).
/23/
Letter to Riemer (July 1810), included in Weigand (45).
WORKS CONSULTED
Altizer, Thomas J. J.
1977
Caton, Hiram
1973
The Self-Embodiment of God. New York: Harper &

Row.
The Origin of Subjectivity. New Haven: Yale University
Press.
Crossan, John Dominic

1974
Dark Interval: Towards a Theology of Story. New York:

Argus Communications.

The End of Theology

Dupre, Louis
1976
177
Transcendental Selfhood. New York: Seabury Press.
Gehtmann-Siefert, Annemarie
1974
Das Verhaltnis von Philosophie und Theologie im
Denken Martin Heideggers. Freiburg-Munich: Karl
Alber.
Hegel, G. W. F.
1929
The Science of Logic. W. H. Johnston and L. G.

Struthers, trans. New York: Macmillan.
1967
Phenomenology of Mind. J. B. Baille, trans. New York:

Harper & Row.
1970
On Art, Religion, and Philosophy. J. Glenn Gray, ed.

New York: Harper & Row.
Heidegger, Martin
1949
"On the Essence of Truth," Existence and Being.

Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 142-83.
1958
What is Philosophy? William Kluback and Jean Wilde,

trans. New York: Twayne Publishers.
1960
"The Onto-Theo-Logical Nature of Metaphysics,"

Essays in Metaphysics. Kurt Leidecker, trans. New
York: Philosophical Library, 33-68.
1962
Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. James S.

Churchill, trans. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University
Press.
1966
Discourse on Thinking. John M. Anderson and E. Hans

Freund, trans. New York: Harper & Row.
1968
What is Called Thinking? New York: Harper & Row.
1969
An Introduction to Metaphysics. Ralph Mannheim,

trans. Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Co.
1970
Hegel's Concept of Experience. New York: Harper &

Row.
1971a
On the Way to Language. Peter Hertz, trans. New York:

Harper & Row.
1971b
Poetry, Language, Thought. Albert Hofstadter, trans.

New York: Harper & Row.
1972
On Time and Being. Joan Stambaugh, trans. New York:

Harper & Row.
1973
The End of Philosophy. Joan Stambaugh, trans. New

York: Harper & Row.
1975
Early Greek Philosophy. David Krell and Frank

Capuzzi, trans. New York: Harper & Row.

178
Carl L. Raschke
1976
"Phenomenology and Theology," The Piety of Thinking.

James G. Hart and John C. Maraldo, trans.
Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 5-21.
Kaufman, Gordon
1975
An Essay in Theological Method. Missoula, MT:

Scholars Press.
Kockelmans, Joseph
1973
Kuhn, Thomas S.
1962
The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago: The

University of Chicago Press.
Mehta, J. L.
1971
The Philosophy of Martin Heidegger. New York: Harper

& Row.
Miller, David
1974
The New Polytheism. New York: Harper & Row.
Nietzsche, Friedrich
1967
1974
The Will to Power. Walter Kaufmann and R. J.

Hollingdale, trans. New York: Random House.
The Gay Science. New York: Random House.
Ornstein, Robert
1972
The Psychology of Consciousness. San Francisco: W. H.

Freeman.
Ott, Heinrich
1972
"Hermeneutic and Personal Structure of Language," On

Heidegger and Language. Joseph Kockelmans, ed. and
trans. Evanston: IL: Northwestern University Press,
169-93.
Pannenburg, Wolfhart
1976
Popper, Karl
1968
"Heidegger on Theology." The South- Western Journal

of Philosophy 4: 85-108.
Theology and the Philosophy of Science. Philadelphia:

Westminster Press.
The Logic of Scientific Discovery. New York: Harper &
Row.
Robinson, James M., and John B. Cobb, Jr., eds.

1963
The Later Heidegger and Theology. New York: Harper
& Row.
Surber, Jere Paul
1975
Tracy, David
1975
"Hegel's Speculative Sentence." Hegel-Studien 10: 21130.

Blessed Rage for Order. New York: Seabury Press.

The End of Theology
179
Van Leeuwen, Arendt Th.

1966
Christianity in World History. New York: Charles
Scribner's Sons.
Watts, Alan
1964
Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship. New York:

Random House.
Weigand, Hermann H., trans.

1949
Goethe: Wisdom and Experience. New York: Pantheon
Books.
White, Victor
1961
God and the Unconscious. Cleveland: World Publishing

Co.
Wiggins, James, ed.

1975
Wilder, Amos
1973
Theology as Story. New York: Harper & Row.

"Theology and Theopoetic." Christian Century 20: May
23, 593-96; December 5, 1195-98.
Wittgenstein, Ludwig
1953
Philosophical Investigations. New York: Macmillan.


The End of Theology

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

The End of Theology

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

American Academy of Religion