Abstract
This article is concerned with how a particular concept of ontology switched from theistic to atheistic to theistic again due to the influences and disciples of Martin Heidegger. It is agreed that Heidegger took aspects of Christian thought, namely from Augustine of Hippo, Martin Luther, and Søren Kierkegaard, stripping them of their relation to God and instead orientating them to nothingness. Despite Heidegger’s methodological atheism, his ontology was taken up by a number of theologians such as Ernst Fuchs and Rudolf Bultmann, who in their turn influenced Eberhard Jüngel, who in turn mentioned the direct influence that Heidegger has on his thought. Whilst Jüngel acknowledges his debts to Heidegger in the area of ontology, Jüngel also seeks to incorporate the history of God into ontology, where the history of God as Trinity is defined by the passivity of Christ on the cross, and how that event redefines evil’s work in nothingness. This article initially explores how Heidegger formulated his account of ontology, then explores how Jüngel re-Christianized Heidegger’s ontology; evaluating what can be drawn from these shifts about the relationship between ontology and history.
Highlights
Introduction to MetaphysicsTranslated by Gregory Fried and RichardPolt
In order to do this Jüngel focuses on the revelation of Christ as he sees, following the thought of Karl Barth, that the only source of Christian theology is in the unity of God and humanity in the incarnation of the person of Christ
Jüngel’s use of Heidegger is twofold. Jüngel draws his account of human being from Heidegger, both in his understanding of how language is an integral aspect of human life, and in how he understands human being as having a desire to actualize itself, to find authenticity in itself
Summary
Terms have a loaded history behind them and that history, when taken as Nietzsche does, to its logical conclusion entails and necessitates atheism as such a God cannot be conceived of.27 Jüngel wishes to think both God and thought anew from a present situation of inevitable atheism, where belief in God is either non-existent or there is a false belief in the wrong sort of God. In order to do this Jüngel focuses on the revelation of Christ as he sees, following the thought of Karl Barth, that the only source of Christian theology is in the unity of God and humanity in the incarnation of the person of Christ.28 Jüngel sees that this is most clearly revealed and known in the event of the cross, for “faith in the crucified God forces us to contest the view that God is absolutely invulnerable essence” (GMW, 123) as it is an inversion of the Cartesian confidence.29 What happens is that “God is transformed into the humanly conceivable only when he ceases to be that infinity which as superego is opposed to finite man.
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