God Without Being by Jean-Luc Marion

God Without Being by Jean-Luc Marion

Author:Jean-Luc Marion
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Chicago Press


4—Whereof We Speak

This compound device, which we could develop and confirm in a number of results, directly has at least four consequences. Two concern the theologian, two others theology. If, first, theology as theology attempts the hermeneutic of the words in view, hence also, from the point of view of the Word, if the Eucharist offers the only correct hermeneutic site where the Word can be said in person in the blessing, if finally only the celebrant receives authority to go beyond the words as far as the Word, because he alone finds himself invested by the persona Christi, then one must conclude that only the bishop merits, in the full sense, the title of theologian. This proposition may appear paradoxical, but at the risk of simplifying, we must insist on it: the teaching of the Word characterizes the apostles (hence also those who follow in their place) as does the presiding of the Eucharist; the close tie between the two functions clearly marks that it is in fact a question of the same. Without the presiding of the Eucharist, the hermeneutic does not attain the theological site: the Word in person. No doubt the function of the theological hermeneutic can be delegated, but in the same way that the bishop delegates to the simple priest the function of presiding over the Eucharist. And just as a priest who breaks his communion with the bishop can no longer enter into ecclesiatical communion, so a teacher who speaks without, even against, the Symbol of the apostles, without, even against, his bishop, absolutely can no longer carry on his discourse in an authentically theological site. From this perspective, one cannot avoid considering every attempt to constitute theology as a science to be at least very problematic; beyond the fact that the status of science makes of theology a theology, beyond the fact that demonstrative rigor doubtless has hardly more pertinence here than in philosophy, this epistemological mutation prompts, or requires, the loosening of the tie of delegation between the bishop, theologian par excellence, and his teaching adjunct, who, always and naturally brought to postulate his independence, henceforth finds a possible justification for this illusion: for to detach oneself from the bishop does not offer to “theological science” an “object” that is finally neutral, but does away with the eucharistic site of the hermeneutic; henceforth, instead of interpreting the text in view and from the point of view of the Word, hence in service of the community, the theologian will have only one alternative: either to renounce aiming at the referent (positivistic “scientific” exegesis) without admitting any spiritual meaning, and the text has no referent—it says nothing—or else to produce by himself, hence ideologically, a new site of interpretation, in view of a new referent. In one case, breaking with the bishop, the theologian no longer serves the community in any way, and he abandons it to the hunger dodging of the “pastoral”; in the other, manipulating the bishop as he does the community, the theologian turns them away from the eucharistic site.



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