The God Who May Be and the God Who Was

Abstract

This chapter explores what might be called the incarnate historicity of the phenomena of the life, death, and potential rebirth of the “same” God of the Western ontotheological tradition. It holds that for the multivalent advent concepts, or in metaphysical parlance, parousia concepts, of the Western tradition are the indispensable conditions of a present return to the God-who-may-be through the God-who-was. The discussion looks into the eschatological theogonies of the God-who-was and the God-who-may-Be. By recasting Kearney's project in the terms of a Hegel–Heidegger, or system-deconstruction, tension, and by defining this ambiguous middle place as an eschatological theogony, it attempts to clarify the tension necessarily remaining in Kearney's own “onto-eschatological” discourse. It also suggests that Kearney's discourse must necessarily lean more closely to the romantic side he insists that if the God-who-may-be turns out to be a monster when expectation turns to realization, or possibility to actuality.