Christians are interes,ted in the

thought 0/ Heidegger, even though

God-less, because there is truth in
Heidegger and wherever there is
truth there is God.

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

-AND PROFESSOR JONAS
WILLIAM J. RICHARDSON

ON THE FRONT PAGE of the second section of The N ew Y ork Times

for Saturday, April 11, 1964, there appeared a scream headline
which read: "Scholar breaks with Heidegger/Conference at Drew is
told philosopher's work lacks meaning for Christians/Pro-N1azism is
charged/Teacher at the New School cites German's statement ending
with Heil Hitler."
The scholar in question was Dr. Hans Jonas, Professor of Philosophy at the New School of Social Research in New York City. The
conference, to which he had been invited to give the keynote address,
had been convened at Drew University, Madison, N.J., under the
leadership of the eminent Dean of its Graduate School, Dr. Stanley
Romaine Hopper. The announced theme of the three.,d'ay Consultation had been "The Problem of Non-objectifying Thinking and Speaking in Contemporary Theology." But in simpler terms it had as its
purpose to offer most of the leading thinkers of contemporary Protestantism the opportunity to discuss with two special guests invited from
Europe, during a three-day Consultation, the relevance of Martin
Heidegger's thought in its most contemporary form to their theological enterprise.
As a matter of fact, Heidegger himself had been invited to give
the opening address, hut when in J anuHry his doctors forbade hirn
EDITOR'S NOTE: This article is the text of the annuaI Suarez Lecture delivered at Fordharn University, April 27, 1964.

THOUGHT

14

to make the journey, he sent a communication to be read in absentia

to the assembly and DT. J onas was invited to speak in his stead.
By any standard, Dr. Jonas' performance was brilliant-though
somewhat unexpected. Accepting the invitation, he later said, as a
call of destiny, he launched what may weIl be one of the most incisive criticisms that has ever been directed against this German thinker.
With erudition and fire, with lucidity and wit, he affirmed with all
vigor the nonrelevance of the contemporary Heidegger for theology,
and thereby articulated in dynamic fashion his own attitude toward
Heidegger and the problem oI God.
For lnany months this had been the proposed theme for these re
ections. It was my intention to trace the development of Heidegger's
thinking about God and examine in some detail some docu,ments
that recently have become available. The purpose would have been
to try to disengage the essentials of Heidegger's attitude toward the
question, and determine its relevance for Christian thought. But Dr.
Jonas changed all that. Throwing the problem into the context of
theology, he offered the most damning evaluation possible of Heidegger's attitude toward God. 1 should like to propose, then, that we
renounce the luxury of a purely philosophieal meditation, and pick
up the gage where Dr. Jonas has thrown it down. My purpose is not
to be merely topical, but philosophy does have an obligation to be
relevant. Nor is it my purpose to be polemic, but a statement for the
prosecutJlon warrants a statement for the defense, in order that justice,
which is to say truth, may have its way.
To situate the problem properly let us ask: What "ras the meaning of the Consultation at Drew"? what was the substance of the Jonas
attack? w"hat is its value?
THE CONSULTATION AT DREW

If Martin Heidegger and Hans J onas, the one in absentia and the
other in praesentia, came to share the same platform at Drew, this
could have been achieved only through the good offices oI a great and
good mutual friend, Rudolf Bultmann. 1 do not mean, oI course, that
Bultmann's theology alone is the pjvotal point of the "new hermeneutic" (that is, the science 01' art oI interpreting Sacred Scripture),
which was the fundamental issue of the Consultation. But 1 do mean
that without Bultmann's contribution, consciously modeled on the
----------------------------------

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

15

early work of Heidegger, the problem of contemporary hern1eneutics

would never have been posed. I mean, too, that the contemporary
problem itself turns upon the question : Does the evolution of Heidegger's own thought through the famous Kehre-which we may translate as "turning" or "reversal"-invite a corresponding "turning"
or "reversal" in the Bultmannian method?
The controversy-for controversy it is-was not engaged properly
until1959 when Heinrich tt (disciple of, and now successor to, Karl
Barth at the University of Basel), who had already, under Barth's
direction, written his doctoral dissertation in 1955 on the theology
of Bultmann, 1 published a study of IIeidegger entitled Thinking and
Being, The Way 0/ Martin Heidegger and the Way 0/ Theology.2 It
suggested that fidelity to the Heideggerean inspiration as it evolved
in the philosopher's later works would lead Bultmann and his dis..
ciples beyond their original position in the direction of the theological
position represented rather by Karl Barth.
The controversy itself cannot be our concern in this discussion. Let
us be content with abrief resume of the use to which Bultnlann put the
early Heidegger, for in this Hans Jonas played a role. If we were
to look for the steady eenter around which Bultmann's entire theological effort revolves, we might find that it is no different from that of
Karl Barth, no matter how divergent may be the paths that each subsequently folIows. In the Preface to the second edition of his Epistle
to the Romans, Barth writes:
. . . If I have a "system" it consists in the fact that I keep in mind as persistently as possihle what Kierkegaard called the "infinite qualitative difference between time and eternity" in hath its negative and its positive meaning. . . . 3
This, toD, is the very heart of Bultmann. What characterizes Bultmann's effort, however, is that his conception of God and God's relation to the worl,d is based upon the analogy of what we know of man
1

Geschichte und Heilsgeschichte in der Theologie RudolJ Bultrnanns (Tbingen:

l.e.B. Mohr, 1955).

2 Denken und Sein. Der Weg Martin Heideggers und der Weg der Theologie (Zurich:
EVZ Verlag, 1959).

3 " Wenn ich ein 'System' habe, so besteht es darin, dass ich das, was Kierkegaard
den 'unendlichen qualitativen Unterschied' von Zeit und Ewigkeit genannt hat, in seiner
negativen und positiven bedeutung mglichst beharrlich im Auge behalte...."-K. Barth,
Der Rmerbrief, 2nd ed. (1922), p. xiii. Trans. E. C. Hoskyns, The Epistle to the
Romans (London: Oxford University, 1963), p. 10.

16

THOUGHT

and 'Inan'S relationship to the world. Now Bultmann's conception oI

man is avowedly Heideggerean: man is qualitatively different from
all other heings in the world of his experience for he transcends all
beings. The fundamental choice open to man, upon whichdepends
the achievement or nonachievement of authenticity, is this: either he
can lose himself among beings, forgetting his great prerogative and
becoming in his own eyes abeing like the rest-at best a subject for
whom everything else is an object, with his eyes turned steadily toward tlIe past; or he can live in terms of his prerogative, accept himself as transcendence, open hirnself to the future, constantly achieve
the self that is offered hirn to become by constantly re-trieving (Wiederhol~~ng) the Being that comes to hirn througll his paste In such a
choice eonsistshis authenticity.
Whell such a schema is transposed into a new key so that it may
enable us to speak mutatis mutandis of God, we find that God is
infinitely and qualitatively different from the world Hecreated. And
" ... just as man in his finite 'historicity' transcends the whole sphere
of the subject-object correlation, so also does God as an infinite Existent tranBcend all that falls within the macrocosmic counterpart of this
same sp~here."4
One inference from this is immediate. There is nothing in the created order of things, nothing that man is, has, or does, therefore
nothing in human language as such, no effort on the part of the sacred
writer and still less of the theologian, that is directly divine or can
be assiglled a divine function or significance. Let us see what this
means in the context of what Bultmann calls the "mythological" language of the New Testament. True enough, the sacred writer bears
witness to the fact that human existence is controlled somehow by the
action of God. But this testimony is encrusted in language thatbelongs properly to this world, and God's action is portrayed as if it
belonged properly to the world oI men. Take the mythic language of
a miracle, for example. It presents God's action as a process which
suddenly interrupts and at the same time prolongs the natural course
of history-it inserts transcendent causality into the events of a human world. In a word, myth objectifies God's action, that is, makes
it an objeet about which man can think and speak, makes this action
4 S. Ogden, "Introduction" to Existence and Faith. Shorter Writings
mann, ed. S. Ogden (New York: Meridian, 1960), p. 16.

0/

Rudol/ Bult-

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

17

immanent to man's world and therelore destroys God's infinitely

and qualitatively different transcendence.
We see at onee, then, why Bultmann is comlmitted to demythologize
the Christian message. The reason is not alone that our contemporary scientifie world can no longer aceept the mythological formulations of Sacred Scripture !an,d therefore tends to shut its ears to the
message contained therein. The reason is more profoundly in the
nature of reality itself arg Bultmann conceives it. We can set aside
any previous theological formulation of faith, including those of the
canonieal theologians, that is, the inspired writers, themselves, because every human formulation is a humanaffair and has no divine
significance. Furthermore, we must set aside all "mythological" formulations, becau!se they obseure the fact th!at God's difference from
the world is not only quantitative hut qualitative.
All this ;characterizes the thought of the mature Bultmann as it has
hecome known to the public since 1941, hut the history of its development is for our purposes interesting. One might say that the first
break-through in the advance toward what we now call demythologizing was made not 'hy Bultmann but by Karl Barth with his commentary
on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans. In the Preface to the first edition (1918) he writes: " ... My whole attention was directed to looking through the historical to the spirit of the Bihle, which is the
eternal Spirit. ..."~ Under attack from Adolf von Harnack in 1923
for his failure in objectivity (theology's task is "to get intellectual
control of the object," said Harnack), Barth replied: ". . . The
'scholarliness' of theology eonsists in being bound to the recolleetion
that its object was first subject and must again and again hecome
suhject...."6
Bultmann recognized the theological validity of Barth's fait
accompli-at least in the second edition (1922)-and soon devoted
himself to ,developing and clarifying the method, which he first ealled
Sachkritik, that is, criticism in terms of subject matter, so that this
5 " Aber meine ganze Aufmerksamkeit war darauf gerichtet, durch das Historische
hindurch zu sehen in den Geist der Bibel, den der ewige Geist ist. . . . "-K. Barth,
Der Rmerbrief (Bern: G. A. Bschlin, 1919), p.v. Trans. J. Robinson, The New Hermeneutic, ed. J. Robinson, J. Cobb (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 22.
6 " Die 'Wissenschaftlichkeit' der Theologie wre dann ihre Gebundenheit an die
Erinnerung, dass ihr Objekt zuvor Subjekt gewesen ist und immer wieder werden muss.
. . ."-Kar! Barth, "Ein Briefwechsel mit Adolf von Harnack," in Theologische Fragen
und Antworten: Gesammelte Vortrge (Zollikon: Evangelischer Verlag, 1957),111, 10.

THOUGHT

18

method might be put to more general use. 7 One year later (1923)
Heidegger, with Sein und Zeit germinating in his head but four years
before its publication, joined hirn on the faeulty at Marburg and their
elose assoeiation began.
In the long years between 1922 and 1941 during which Bultmann's
theory of demythologizing slowly matured, one work in partieular
written by one of Bultmann's most gifted students, who had aiready
done his doetorate under Heidegger in 1928, stands out. Its titIe:
Gnosis und Sptantiker Geist. s Published in 1934, it was indeed a
brilliant example of all that Bultmann eould hope that the method
of demythologizing would be. When reissued in 1954, Bultmann himself wrote apreface to the first volulne, in whieh he says:
... The method of the author, oE laying hold of a historical phenomenon by
means of the principle oE the analysis of existence, seems to me to have
proven hrilliantly its fruitEulness. I am certain that this work will fructify
research in the history of ideas in many regards, and not least in the interpretation of the New Testament. 9

This book, a classic in the field, appeared in English in 1958 and a

second edition in paperback in 1963. Its English titIe: The Gnostic
Religiotl/; the author, Hans Jonas. 10
When, then, Heidegger hirnself was unable to come to Drew to
launch "the discussion on "Non-objectifying Thinking and Speaking in
TheoIogy," who on the American scene was better qualified to take
his place than a former student both of Heidegger and Bultmann, who
hirnself was the most brilliant exponent of the method now under
scrutiny, namely, Dr. Jonas himself?
DR. JONAS' CRITICISM

Dr. Jonas opens his attack by insisting that there is much secular7 See J. M. Robinson, "Hermeneutic since Barth," in The N ew Hermeneutic. New
Frontiers iln Theology, ed. J. M. Robinson, J. Cobb, 11 (New York: Harper and Row,
1964), pp. 29, 3l.
8 H. J onas, Gnosis und Sptantiker Geist. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur des
Alten und Neuen Testaments (Gttingen: Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1934).
9 R. Buhmann, Vorwort to H. J onas, Gnosis und Sptantiker Geist (Gttingen : Vandenhoek und Huprecht, 1954), I, vii. Trans. 1. 1\'1. Robinson, The New Hermeneutic, pp. 34-35.
The author had first come to grips formally with the problem in terms of the hermeneutics of Church dogma in the first appendix to his earlier work (soon to be re-edited)
Augustin und das paulinische Freiheitsproblem. Forschungen zur Religion und Literatur
des Alten und N euen Testaments (Gttingen : Vandenhoek und Ruprecht, 1930).
10 H. Jonas, The Gnostic Religion, 1st ed. (Boston: Beacon, 1958), 2nd ed., paperback
( Boston: Beacon, 1963).

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

19

ized Christianity in Heidegger's thought and language. In the early

period, such concepts as guilt, concern, anxiety, call of conscience,
resolution, fallenness, authenticity-inauthenticity, and in the later
period such terms as hearing, response, mission, shepherd, revelation, thanksgiving-all oi these characteristically Heideggerean
terms have a profoundly Christian resonance. This accounts for the
affinity that the Christian thinker feels with Heidegger's thought and
explains the desire to profit fron1 it. But herein lies the danger :
... l-'he theologian must ask, before he re-imports his own original product:
what have you done "vith my little ones? in what company did you bring
theIn up? are they still my uncorrupted children? can 1 take them back f rom
you? and what, if I take them, will 1 take with them? ... 11

Can Heidegger's philosophy be assimilatedby the Christian thinker

in part without taking the whole? Dr. Jonas says: No!
What does Dr. Jonas see as belonging to the whole of Heidegger
that the Christian must accept if he takes the part? Firstly he must
accept Heidegger's so-called "fatalism" :
Let us start with the idea of fate. It looms large in Heidegger's thinking and
in his idea of thinking. Thinking's lot is cast by Being. Being speaks to
thought, and what it speaks is thought's lot. ... Thinking about Being .
has a fate-like character (or: is "fate-Iaden": geschicklieh ) . . . .12

Whatever the purely philosophical value of the notion of Being as

fate-ful, there is one exanlple of such a conception of destiny that
Dr. Jonas is painfully aware of:
But as to Heidegger's Being, it is an occurrence of unveiling, a fate-laden
happening upon thought: so ""Tas the Fhrer and the call of German destiny
under hirn: an unveiling of something indeed, a call of Being all right, fateladen in every sense: neither then nor now did Heidegger's thought provide
a norm by which to decide hO\iv to answer such calls. . . . Heidegger's own
answer is, to the shame of philosophy, on record and, I hope, not forgotten .
. . . The following quotation from a proclamation by Heidegger (then Rector)
to the students oI the University of Freiburg in Novernber, 1933, serves as
an example: "Not theorems and 'ideas' be the rules of your Being. The Fhrer
11 H. J onas, "Heidegger and Theology," Review 01 M etaphysics XVIII (DecembeL
1964), 207-2.33, p. 214. Hereafter cited as: H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology." Citations in the present article have been made to conform to the published version, which
slightly expands and emends the text as delivered. For the sake of clarity and consistency
in the exposition that folIows, however, we have taken the liberty of eapitalizing the
word "Being" in Professor J onas' text whenever it c1early refers to Heidegger's Sein.
12

H. J onas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 215.

20

THOUGHT

himse]J and alone is the present and future German reality and its law. Learn
ever deeper to know: that from now on each and every thing demands decision, and every action, responsihility. Heil Hitler! "13

No,v a Christian-it is clear-and therefore the Christian theologian must reject any such idea of fate and history :
... For one thing, the Christian is said to be saved from the power of fate .
. . . Second and more so, that which saved hirn was, hy the understanding
of faith as distinct from the understanding of the world, not an event of the
world and thus not an event of fate, nor destined ever to become fate or
part of fate itself, hut an event invalidating all the dicta of fate and overruling the words which fate speaks toman, including the words of selfunveiling Being....14

But it is not only Heidegger's fatalism that is repugnant to ChrisDr. Jonas claims, it is his paganism, too-paganism that deifies the world at the same time that it de-divinizes God. Heidegger deifies the world, for Being, according to hirn, is the Being that reveals
the beings of this world-ho kosmos houtos. Being, then, is essentially
immanent in the world. Yet Being is conceived as the Holy. He cites
Heidegger's Letter on Humanism: " .. Only from the truth of Being
can the essence of the Holy be thought. Only from the essence of the
Holy is the essence of deity to be thought. Only in the light of the
essence of deity can that be thought and said which the word 'God'
should name.... "15 Is this not todeify the World?
But not only does Heidegger deify the world, he de-divinizes God'.
D-r. Jonas makes his point by a display of verbal jiujitsu that he calls
a "stretch of rigorous dialectics." Respecting, apparently, what Heidegger calls the ontological difference, that is, the difference between
a being (that which is) and Being itself (the process by which it is),
Dr. Jonas argues thus:
tianity~,

13 H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 218, including note 7. In citing Professor

Jonas here we take the liberty of appending the footnote to the main text, for such was
the version which was delivered at Drew, and which occasioned the headlines in the
New York Times on the day following. Prof. Jonas' italies.
1,4 H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 217.

15 " Erst aus der Wahrheit des Seins lsst sich das Wesen des Heiligen denken. Erst
aus dem ""Vesen des Heiligen ist das Wesen von Gottheit zu denken. Erst im Lichte des
Wesens von Gottheit kann gedacht und gesagt werden. was das Word 'Gott' nennen
soll. . . ." M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief ber den
"Humanisrnus" (Bern: Francke, 1947), p. 102. Cp. p. 85. Trans. H. Jonas, "Heidegger
--------------------and Theology," p. 220. Prof. Jonas' itali~~

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

21

Beings are occasions for the experiencing of Being; God is a being; thus
God, when encountered, is an occasion for the experiencing of Being. Being is
experienced in heings as amazement at their heing (existing), Le., arnazement
that they are at all; thus the experience of Being in God is amazernent at his
existing at alle Amazement at something heing at all is to think with its Being
its not-heing or its contingency; thus the experiencing of Being in the
encounter with God is the thinking of the not-being and the contingency of
God....16

All this is said with a lip service to the ontological difIerence. But
when all is said and done, does this "difIerence" really make much
difIerence? Does not Heidegger really coneeive of Being as a being
after all?
... Indeed how can one speak of Being's activity and man's receptivity, of
the forrner's having and heing a fate, heing event, not only making possible
thought hut giving thought, clearing or ohscuring itself in such thought, having voice, calling to man, entrusting itself to man's care, appropriating hirn
into its own care, favoring him, enlisting his loyalty, summoning his gratitude,
hut also needing him-how can one attribute all this to it unless one understands it as an agency and apower, as some sort of subject? ...11

Once Dr. Jonas has underscored Heidegger's apparent fatalism

and paganism, he speIls out certain un-Christian consequences that
the Christian theologian would have to aecept if he wished to strueture his thought in those terms. First he would have to face the consequences of apermanent Tevelation, where future revelations are not
prejudged by past revelations and no one revelation supplies an
authoritative criterion by which others are to he judged. 18 Secondly
he would have to live with the enormous arrogance oI Heidegger's
thought, that is, the claim that througll him speaks the essence of
things itself, the claim to be, following the insinuation of Nietzsehe's
lllocking allusion to Schopenhauer, the ventriloquist of Being. 19 Not
the least sign of that ,arrogance for J onas is the abiding desire of
I-Ieidegger to transcend the world of subjeets and objeets, a relationship which Jonas sees as a God-given privilege of the human condition
as such. 2
H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 221.
H. J onas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 223.
18}-1. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," pp. 225-228.
19 H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," pp. 228-229.
2D H. J onas, "Heidegger and Theology, p. 230.
16

11

22

THOUGHT
HEIDEGGER

1. Synoptic View

The indictment is a heavy one. It is impossible to reply to it all.

But I should like to review the main lines of Heidegger's effort, underlining those elements that have reference to the question of God.
Stretching over more than fifty years, Heidegger's efIort, as no
doubt that of any major thinker, may be viewed either in its unity or
its diversity, synoptically or genetically. For the sake of clarity of
presentation, let us begin with the synoptic view. But even a synoptic
view cannot dispense from a look at the first moment fifty-eight years
ago when the long way began. At the age of eighteen, while still a
student in the Gymnasium at Constance, when he was at the education level of a college sophomore, he received from a priest-friend,
Conrad Grber, a copy of the doctoral dissertation of the neoscholastic thinker Franz Brentano, written in 1862, entitled The
Manifold Sense 0/ Being in Aristotle (where "being" translates the
German Seiendes and the Greek on.) Of this first experience Heidegger writes in 1962:
... On the title page of his work, Brentano quotes Aristotle's phrase: to on
legetai pollachs. I translate: "A being becomes manifest (sc. with regard to
its Being) in many ways." Latent in this phrase is the question that determined the way of my thought: what is the pervasive, simple, unified determination oE Being that permeates all of its multiple meanings? This question raised another: what, then, does Being mean? To what extent (why and
how) does the Being of beings unfold in the four modes which Aristotle
constantly affirms, but whose common origin he leaves undetermined. One
need but run over the names assigned to them in the language of the philosophical tradition to be struck by the fact that they seem at first irreconcilable:: Being as property, Being as possibility and actuality, Being as
truth, Being as schema of the categories. What sense of Being comes to expression in these four headings. How can they be brought into comprehensible accord?
This accord can not be grasped without first raising and settling the question: whence does Being as such (not merely beings as beings) receive its
determination ?21
21 ". . . Brentano setzte auf das Titelblatt seiner schrift den Satz des Aristoteles:
to on legetai pollachs. Ich bersetze: Das Seiende wird (nmlich hinsichlich seines
Seins) in vielfacher Weise offenkundig. In diesem Satz verbirgt sich die meinen Denkweg bestimmende Frage: Welches ist die alle mannigfachen Bedeutungen durchherrschende einfache, einheitliche Bestimmung von Sein? Diese Frage weckt die folgenden:

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

23

It is irnportant that we understand clearly how Heidegger experiences beings an,d how he poses the questin about the Being oI beings.
In the same text i 1962 he continues:
Meanwhile a decade went by and a great deal of swerving and straying
through the history of Western philosophy was needed for the above questions to reach even an initial clarity. To gain this clarity three insights were
decisive, though, to be sure, not yet sufficient for the venture of analysing the
Being-question as a question about the sense of Being.
Dialogues with Husserl provided the imlmediate experience of the phenomenological method that prepared the coneept of phenomenology explained
in the introduction to Sein und Zeit. In this evolution a normative role was
played by the reference back to fundamental words of Creek thought which
I interpreted accordingly: logos (to make manifest) and phainesthai (to show
oneself) .22

The influence oI Husserl, then, cam.e early and we cannt exaggerate its importance, fr the whle interrogation f Being and beings is conditioned by the initial experience oI the phenomenologist:
that a being is that which appears, is a being fr hirn nly insofar as
it appears.
Was heisst denn Sein? Inwiefern (weshalb und wie) entfaltet sich das Sein des Seienden
in die von Aristoteles stets nur festgestellten, in ihrer gemeinsamen Herkunft unbestimmt
gelassen vier Weisen? Es gengt, diese in der Sprache der philosophischen berlieferung auch nur zu nennen, um von dem zunchst unvereinbar Erscheinenden
betroffen zu werden: Sein als Eigenschaft, Sein als Mglichkeit und Wirklichkeit, Sein
als Wahrheit, Sein als Schema der Kategorien. ~l eIcher Sinn von Sein spricht in diesen
vier Titeln? Wie lassen sie sich in einen verstehbaren Einklang bringen?
Diesem Einklang knnen wir erst dann vernehmen, wenn zuvor gefragt und geklrt
wird: Woher empfngt das Sein als solches (nicht nur das Seiende als Seiendes) seine
Bestimmung?"-l\1. Heidegger, "Preface" to W. J. Richardson, S.J., Heidegger: Through
Phenomenology to Thought, Phaenomenologica, No. 13 (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963), p. xi.
For the sake of clarity, the reader should be aW8lre that the word "being" when capitalized (Being) translates Heidegger's Sein and when not capitalized (being) translates
Heidegger's Seiendes (that-which-is.)
22 "Indes verging ein Jahrzehnt, und es bedurfte vieler Um- und Abwege durch die
Geschichte der abendlndischen Philosophie hindurch, bis auch nur die genannten
Fragen in eine erste Klarheit gelangten. Dafr waren drei Einsichten entscheidend, die
freilich noch nicht ausreichten, um eine Errterung der Seinsfrage als Frage nach dem
Sinn von Sein zu wagen.
Durch die unmittelbare Erfahrung der phnomenologischen Methode in Gesprchen mit
Husserl bereitete sich der Begriff von Phnomenologie vor, der in der Einleitung zu
"Sein und Zeit" (7) dargestellt ist. Hierbei spielt die Rckbeziehung auf die entsprechend ausgelegten Grundworte des griechischen Denkens: logos (offenbar machen)
und phainesthai (sich zeigen) eine massgebende RolIe."-M. Heidegger, "Preface" to
Richardson, H eidegger: ... , p. xi.

24

THOUGHT
But it was not only Husserl that marked hirn:

A renewed study of the Aristotelian treatises (especially Book IX of the

Metaphysics and Book VI of the Nicomachean Ethics resulted in the insight
into Aletheuein [the verbal form of the Greek word for truth] as the process
of revealment, and in the characterization of truth as nonconcealment, to
which all self-manifestation of beings pertains.... 23

In other words, he finds in Aristotle justification for the experience

of the phenomenologist that a being is that which is manifest to hirn,
is present to hirn as manifesting itself for what it iso Being itself, then,
would be the structure or the process that enables a being to become
manifest as what it is, the is-ing of what iso Now for a being to become
manifest, it must be thought of as somehow emerging out of a condition in which it was not manifest (in which it was concealed), so that
it thereby becomes un-concealed. The Being of such a being will be
the process hy which it becomes un-concealed. Now the Creek word
for concealment, as we know, is lethe. The alpha privative negates it.
What is un-concealed (a being, that is) is a-lethes, which we normally
translate by the word "true." The process by which this non-concealment comes-to-pass (the Being of this being) is aletheuein, the coming.
to-pass of truth.
Heidegger's initial ex,perience with Brentano was his introduction
to philosophy. Through Brentano, then, his first real master was
Aristotle, and it was under the aegis of the great Stagirite that he
learned the meaning of metaphysics. For Aristotle, what we now call
metaphysics (whatever the history of the word itself) meant "first
philosophy"; it meant posing the question : ti to on hei on; what are
beings as beings? But for Heidegger the question already was what
is the Being (Sein) of beings (Seiende), and to his disappointment
he found that Aristotle never posed the question in these terms. Let
us pause here amoment, for the point is crucial.
Tbe question of Being as Heidegger experiences it is different
from the question about beings as posed by Aristotle. For Being is not
a heing. In the Letter on Humanism (1947) he writes:
23 "Ein erneutes Studium der Aristotelischen Abhandlungen
(im besonderen des
neunten Buches der 'Metaphysik' und des sechsten Buches der 'Nikomachischen' Ethik)
ergab den Einblick in das aletheuein als entbergen und die Kennzeichnung der Wahrheit
als Unverborgenheit, in die alles Sichzeigen des Seienden gehrt. . . ."-M. Heidegger,
"Preface" to Richardson, Heidegger: , pp. x-xiii.

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

25

Being, indeed, what is Being? . . . It is not God, nor [same] ground of

the warld. Being isbroader than all beings-and yet is nearer to man than
all beings, whether they are rocks, animals, works of art, machines, angels
or God. Being is what is nearest [to man]. Yet this nearness remains farthest
removed from hirn....:24

Being lis not a being, because it is that which enables heings to he

manifest (unconcealed) to man and men to each other. It is nearest
to man hecause it makes him to be what he is. Yet it is farthest
removed from hirn because it is not a being with which man, structUTed as he is to deal with beings, can comport himself.
From the point of view of heings, Being encornpasses them all, just
as a domain of openness encompasses what is found within it. Being
is adomain of openness precisely hecause it is the lighting process
hy which heings are lit up. If these beings be "subjects" or "objects,"
then the light itself is neither subject nor object but "between" them
hoth, enabling the encounter between subject and object to come
about. 25
If Being is not a being, nor the surn total of them, the process of
nonconcealment (truth, or truth-ing) has a built-in "not" character
to it that contracts, constricts, or hides it within the beings it lets be
(manifest). As a result, if we try to describe Being merely in terms
of tlle beings that it is not, then the most we can say about it, perhaps, is that it is not a being; and if for amoment, and simply for
purposes of exposition, we call every being a "thing," theu Being is
not a thing, it is No-thing, it is Nothing (Nichts). Being (Sein) and
Nothing (Nichts) are one.
In the early years, Being precisely as No-thing (Nichts) is thema,24 "Doch das Sein-was ist das Sein? ... Das ist nicht Gott und nicht ein Weltgrund.
Das Sein ist weiter denn alles Seiende und ist gleichwohl dem Menschen nher als jedes
Seiende, sei dies ein Fels, ein Tier, ein Kunstwerk, eine Maschine, sei es ein Engel
oder Gott. Das Sein ist das Nchste. Doch die Nhe bleibt dem Menschen am weitesten.
. . ."-M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief ber den "Humanismus" (Bern: Francke, 1947), p. 76 (Writer's translation).

25 Here and in the exposition that folIows, the writer is utilizing the entire textual
basis on which his Ionger study (W. J. Richardson, S.J., Heidegger: Through Phenomenology to Thought, Preface by Martin Heidegger, Phaenomenologica, No. 13 [The
Hague: Nijhoff, 1963]) rests. The reader who wishes a fuller explanation than is offered
in the present article, or detailed documentation from the works of Heidegger himself,
will be able to find them in the Jonger study with the help of its General Index. In
principIe we shall footnote in these pages only the sources of direct citations. Translations are the writer's own.

26

THOUGHT

tized often enough. As Heidegger proceeds along the way, Being is

more disengaged as something positive. For example, in 1950 he
meditates it precisely as nearness. He takes as his starting point the
fact that modern means of travel and communication have reduced
enormously the distance between man and the things with which he
deals. Yet diminished distance need not mean that things are genuinely nearer to man, for no matter how close they come to hirn physically, they are genuinely neal' only when they are comprehended in
that which renders them near, that is, in their nearness as such. He
proposes, then, to meditate the things that are near precisely in their
dimension of nearness. This means to meditate them as near, as what
they are, that is, to meditate things as things. Thus begins the essay
entitled "The Thing. mG
H, then, Heidegger's primary concern is Being, not beings, and if
metaphysics, as Aristotle describes it and the tradition after hirn
conceives it, is concerned with beings as beings, then Heidegger is not
concerned with metaphysics at all. But if it is Being that lets the beings
of metaphysics be manifest to the metaphysician, then Being lies at
the basis of metaphysics, it is its foundation 01' ground. That is why
Heidegger conceives his task as laying the foundation (digging the
ground) for metaphysics; the Being question is the ground question
of metaphysics. In Sein und Zeit he describes his task as developing
a fundamental ontology, that is, as laying the foundation of metaphysies. In the later years he speaks rather of overcoming metaphysics, by thinking precisely the origins (Wesen) of metaphysies,
and he cloes so by a wesentliches Denken, that is, by a "foundational"
thought.
It is important for our undel'standing of the problem of God that
we understand how Heidegger conceives the structul'e of metaphysics.
To interrogate "beings as beings" involves, he claims, a certain
ambiguity. The phrase might suggest the common denominator of
beings, what scholastics call "being in general." In this sense meta
physics is identical with ontology (01' onto-Iogy) though the word
was not used before the seventeenth century. Again, to consider
"beings as beings" may mean to consider them in their ultimate
ground in some sort of supreme being normally called "divine," 01'
26 M. Heidegger, "Das Ding," Vortrge und All/stze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), pp.
163185.

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

27

"god" (theos). Metaphysics in this sense would inevitably be a theology. Now the ambiguity that perrnits metaphysics to become on the
one hand onto-Iogy and on the other theo-Iogy, is, for Heidegger, built
into tlle fonnula on hei on itself. That is why he maintains that metaphysics is of its own nature onto-theo-Iogy.
One more step and we come to Dr. Jonas-and God. Why is it,
after all, that the formula gives rise to this anlbiguity? The reason,
we are told, lies in the nature of on itself. Grammatically it is a participle and as such may be used either as a noun (for example, "can
a human being live on the moon ?") or as an adjective with a verbal
sense ("being anxious to explore the moon, we mnst know"). More
precisely, on, when taken as a noun, means that which is, that is, a
being (Seiendes); taken as a verbal adjective, it designates the process by which a being (as noun) "is," that is, its Beillg (Sein). The
word itself, then, comporting both senses is intrinsically ambivalent
and it is because on can mean either Being, or beings, or both that
the interrogation of on hei on can evolve either as a meditation on
being in general (onto-Iogy) or as ultimate ground (theo-Iogy). In
other words, the onto-theo-Iogical structure of metaphysics for Heidegger is rooted ultimately in the intrinsic ambivalence of on.
But what is this ambivalence, after all ? Nothing else but the correlation in a single word of "being" as noun and "being" as verbal
adjective, of beings and Being. Now we could not speak of ambivalence, of duality, of correlation at all unless there were a diIJerence between Being and beings, and from the very beginning Heidegger has called it the "ontological difference." l~he process of truth
or truth-ing by which beings emerge out of concealment into nonconcealment is nothing more or less than the coming-to-pass of the
ontological difference. This is clear if we recall for a moment the
inaugural address of 1929 when he formulates the ground question
of metaphysics by using the formula of Leibniz: "Why are there
beings at all and not much rather Non-being?" For Leiblliz, of course,
the formula asks effectively about a Supreme Being that grounds all
other beings and therefore is an eminently metaphysical question.
For Heidegger, the question means: How is it possible that beings,
independently of "where" they might have come from, "who" or
"what" may have "caused" them as metaphysics understands these
terms, can be (manifest) as beings? In other words, it is a question

28

THOUGHT

ahout the coming-to-pass of the nonconcealment of beings, ahout the

emergence of the ontological difference.
As time goes on and his language clarifies, it hecomes more and
more clear that what rea11y interests hirn is not so much the meaning
of Heing hut the meaning of the ontological difference as such. In
later years he meditates it under different guises: sometimes as
Unterschied (difference), sometimes as Austrag (the issuing forth of
Being-beings), sometimes as Ereignis (the e-vent out of which the
difIerence arises). Most recently, in a lecture still unpublished (as
far as I know) , delivered at Freiburg, January 30, 1962, he took as
his theme Zeit und Sein, "Time and Being." The title was deliberately evocative, for everyone knows that his major achievement Sein
und Zeit was only the first pa-rt of a projected work. Tbe second part
neveJr appeared hut was to have been entitled Zeit und Sein (Time
and lBeing). To deliberately choose "Time and Being" as the title of
a public lecture at Freiburg (of a11 places) was to deliberately court
the impression that the lecture itself would indicate the continuity of
his present thought with the first work. What did the lecture turn out
to he? A meditation on the formulae es gibt Sein, es gibt Zeit ("Being
is gramted," "Time is granted") together with the correlation between
the nl"O. But what is the Es that gibt? What is it that does the granting? Answer: Ereignis,the e-vent of the ontological difference. In
1959 he had said " ... that which brings about the e-vent is the e-vent
itself... .'m Now in 1962 he says: " ... This [e-vent] is not some
thing new hut the most ancient of ancients in occidental thought, the
primal ancient that hides itself under the name Aletheia. ... m8
Very nice, hut what has a11 thatto do with God? In Fehruary, 1957,
Heidegger hirnself took over the closing session of a seminar that had
meditated Hegel's Science of Logic. He seized the opportunity to
show how his own philosophical reflection differed from that of
HegeL In the hriefest terms it is this: Hegel supposes the ontological
difference in order to think heings in terms of Being, conceived as
Ahsolute Tbought; Heidegger thinks the ontological difference as
27 " Das Ereignende ist das Ereignis selbst-und nichts ausserdem. . . ."-M.
Heidegger, Unterwegs zur Sprache (Pfullingen: Neske, 1959), p. 258.
28 " dass dieses [Ereignis] nicht einmal etwas Neues ist, sondern das lteste des
Alten im abendlndischen Denken, das Uralte, das sich in dem Namen Aletheia verbirgt.
..."-~I. Heidegger, "Zeit und Sein," cited according to auditor's notes with Professor
Heidegger's permission.

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

29

such, that is, as the e-vent out of which Being and beings issue. The
lecture itself is entitled, however, "The Onto-theo-logical Structure of
Metaphysics," and after sketching his own differentiation from Hegel,
he proceeds to meditate the e-vent of the ontological differenee as it
gives issue to metaphysics in its essentially onto-theo-Iogical structure. The significallt question for Heidegger is not: How does metaphysics come to God, but rather, How does Gad come into metaphysics, that is, whence comes this onto-theo-Iogieal structure?
For Heidegger, the God of metaphysics is conceived fundamentally
as Supreme Being who is essentially Cause-Cause of Ibeings other
than Hirnself, Cause of Hinlself-Causa sui, in the Cartesian-Spinozan
sense of that term. Furthermore, as Heidegger sees it, the God of
metaphysics is accessible only by a metaphysical thought, that is, by
a thought directed only toward beings. Ultimately such a thought is
controlled by the laws of logic which is always thought about something, about some object of thought. Metaphysical thought, he would
say, is essentially conceptual, presentative, objectifying thoughtwhen all is said and done, it reduces God, even as Causa sui, to an
object, that is, ofthought.
If this be the God of metaphysics, then, Heidegger says:
. . . To [such a] God man can neither pray nor offer sacrifice. Before the
Causa sui man can not fall on his knees in awe; in the presence of a God like
this he can not make musie and danee. So it is that a god-Iess thought [i.e.,
a foundational thought which does not pose the question of God hut only
interrogates the ontological differenee], whieh must forfeit the God of philosophy, God as Causa sui, is perhaps eloser to the God who is divine. Here
this says only: [such a thoughtJ is freer f or [the divine God] than ontotheo-Iogic would care to admit. 2'9

And now a word for Dr. Jonas. He criticizes the so-called "immanentism" of Heidegger, profoundly pagan because it deifies this
world. I take hirn to mean that Heidegger's Being is essentially a
Being of this world and that it deifies this world because,in Dr. Jonas'
29 " Zu diesem Gott kann der Mensch weder beten, noch kann er ihm opfern.
Vor dem Causa sui kann der Mensch weder aus Scheu ins Knie fallen, noch kann er vor
diesem Gott musizieren und tanzen.
Demgemss ist das gott-lose Denken, das den Gott der Philosophie, den Gott als
Causa sui preisgeben muss, dem gttlichen Gott vielleicht nher. Dies sagt nur: Es
ist freier fr ihn, als es die Onto.Theo~Logik wahrhaben mchte."-M. Heidegger,
Identitt und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), pp. 7071.

30

THOUGHT

eyes, lleing is identical vvith God. " ... Against this, theology should
guard the radical transcendence of God, whose voice comes not out of
Being but breaks into the kingdom of Being from without."30
It is important here to keep clearly in mind that we are concerned
for the moment with Heidegger hirnself and not with the use that has
been nlade of hirn by theologians. Heidegger is a philosopher and
pretends to be no more, and by Dr. Jonas' own definition, as given at
Drew, :philosophy is the "elucidation of the nature of reality by secular thought."31 "The nature of reality" as elucidated by Heidegger
is "reality" as experienced by the phenomenologist, wherein beings
"are" insofar as they are manifest, insoIar as they appear to man.
Being, then, as that which enables beings to becomemanifest, is essentially revelation-revelation of a secular kind. It should not be
surprising that the revelation continues as long as beings are, nor
that it should be "of this world." This is why Heidegger has insisted
so strongly from the beginning that Being itself, as he has experienced
it, is not and cannot be God.
Why, then, call this paganism? Whatever his limitations, one thing
that Heidegger does not do is deify the world. II Heidegger speaks of
Being as the "Holy," this came abaut because it was under this guise
that he :finds Being in the experience of the German poet, Friederich
Hlderlin. Having shared that experience, he can now write (and Dr.
Jonas cites the passage): ". . . Only in terms oI this essence of the
Holy is the essence of divinity to be thought. Only in the light oI the
essence of divinity can be thought and uttered what the word 'God'
should name...."32
As Heidegger sees it, then, he too would want to guard the radical
transcendence of God "whose voice comes not out of Being but breaks
into the kingdom of Being from without." As a matter of fact he would
be rather interested himself to hear Dr. Jonas' "stretch of rigorous
dialectics" in which he speaks oI this "radically transcendent" God.
He would at first be chagrined perhaps that any student oI his could
so grossly have misunderstood the phenomenological character oI the
30 H. Jonas ,"Heidegger and

Theology," p. 219.
H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 210.
32 "... Erst aus dem Wesen des Heiligen ist das Wesen von Gottheit zu denken.
Erst im Lichte des Wesens von Gotthei t kann gedacht und gesagt werden, was das Wort
'Gott' nennen soll. . . ."-M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem
Brief ber den "Humanismus" (Bern: Francke, 1947), p. 102.
31

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

31

ontologieal differenee. But then he would be bemllsed to hear how this

"transcendent God" ean be loeked up in a "stretch of rigorous dialeetic." He would be interested to know if in Dr. Jonas' eyes this metaphysieal God of whom he speaks, who yields so easily to his own
dialectical rigor, who accepts without protest this slavery to logieal
(humanly logical) thought-Heidegger would be interested to know,
I say, if Dr. Jonas really thinks that this is the God whose voiee comes
"not out of Being but breaks into Being from without." Is this the God
before whom David daneed?
In meditating Being as the Holy I take Heidegger to intend that
while rejecting the God of ,metaphysics because it is not divine
enough, he ,vould be endeavoring to explore that dimension of hUlnan
experience which would enable hirn to reeognize God's voiee as
"divine," if He s:peaks, and in answer eall God "God."
2. Genetic Vieu)

What we have said so far eoncerns the synoptie view. We tried to

gather into single foeus what seems to he the heart of Heidegger's
thought: to interrogate the foundations of n1etaphysics in ternlS of the
e-vent of truth (A-Ietheia) out oi which hoth Beings and beings issue
forth. We eome now to a more genetic view of Heidegger as he has
developed through the years.
After Heidegger left the GymnasiunL in Constanee he began his
advanced studies at Freiburg and spent his first three semesters as a
seminarian studying theology. There in the courses of Sacred Scripture he learned the meaning of the word "hermeneutic." At the same
time he experieneed some vague relationship between Being and language, between the self-revealing God and the language of Saered
Scripture, between the word of God and the speculation of theologlans.
In the years that followed the relation of Being and language was
often interlaced with his work. It had a significanl role to play in the
habilitation thesis of 1915, Duns Scotus' Doctrine on Categories and
Signification.3~3 By 1920 when he gave his course on "Expression and
Appearing," it was clear to his students at least that the Being-Ianguage problem was central to his thought.
33 M. Heidegger, Die [(ategorien- und Bedeutungslehre des Duns Scotlls (Tbingen:
1916).

32

THOUGHT

In the summer semester of 1923, Sein und Zeit began to take writ
ten form, and for the first time the word "hermeneutic" appeared in
the title of a university lecture course on "Ontology." After meeting
the word first in his theology courses, he found it again in Dilthey
who had taken it from the same source, theology-in particular from
the theological writings of Schleiermacher, who had given to the word
the broad meaning of an art by which one correctly understands and
judges thewritings of another. It was an easy step to expand this mean
ing of "hermeneutic" still further so that it could apply to any type
of interpretation whatever, even of the plastic arts. All this matured
slowly. As Sein und Zeit crystallized, the author began to conceive
"hermeneutic" more radically still. It would mean for hirn not sim
ply a manner of interpretation, but interpretation itself would be conceived in terms of a still more fundamental process of hermeneutic.
How was the process to be understood? Heidegger went to the rad
ical sense of hermeneuein, which, he maintains, bears profound affin
ity with the Creek god, Hermes, herald of the gods. Hermeneuein for
the mattLring Heidegger came to mean to play the role of herald, to
bear tidings, or, more simply, to make something manifest (Dar.
legen). What for hirn must be made manifest, ever since the philosophical awakening with Brentano, is the Being of beings in its difference from beings. So it happened that "hermeneutic" came to mean
the entire effort to let Being be manifest, the effort to lay the foun
dation of metaphysics.
But at the start, it was not explicitly the foundation of metaphysics
as such that preoccupied hirn. Assistant to Husser! until invited to
Marburg in 1923, the young Heidegger gave his first loyalty to phe.
nomenologyand sought simply to think the essence of phenomenology
in its origins, so as to give to it a rightful place in the philosophical
tradition of the West. It is easy to see how "hermeneutic" (the process
of letting-be-manifest), and the combination of phainomenon (that
which manifests itself) with legein (to let-be-manifest) joined each
other to such an extent that "hermeneutic" and "phenomenology" be.
came for Heidegger but one. If "hermeneutic" retains a nuance of its
own, this is the connotation of language. At any rate, it was because
phenomenology seemed to offer promise of unfolding the hermeneutic
that Heidegger dedicated Sein und Zeit to Edmund Husserl.
In Sein und Zeit, how did the hermeneutic proceed? It is familiar

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

33

to us. Heidegger will attempt to disengage the sense of Being. There

is one being among the rest endowed with a privileged comprehension
of Being, called Dasein. Dasein, then, will he the phenomenon par
excellence. Heidegger will let it show itself for what it is. He will let
it be. What does the analysis reveal Dasein to be? Transcendence that
is finite, whose ultimate meaning is time.
Dasein is transcendent, that is, it passes beyond all beings (including itself), beyond that level where beings are conceived as objects
opposed to subjects (that is, beyond all subject-ohject polarity) to
the Being of beings.
This transcendence is finite, tllat is, it has a built-in "not"-eharacter
(negativity), that makes it limited indeed: Dasein is not master of
its own origin; it simply finds itself in the World as a matter of fact,
seems to be simply thrown there. Dasein is not independent of other
beings; it is inextricably related to them. Dasein is not only related
to other beings hut has a sort of drag toward them, a tendency to lose
itself among them and forget its privilege of transcendence. Dasein
is not capable of comprehending Being except in terms of beings;
therefore for Dasein Being is essentially not-a-being, Non-being
(Nichts). Finally Dasein is not destined to be forever, it is destined
to .end. 1t is Being-unto-en,d and in man that end is death; it is Beingunto-death.
D,asein is, then, transcendence that is finite. It achieves its own
authenticity when it recognizes and accepts itself as what it is. It accepts itself as transcendence, when it overcomes its tendency to lose
itself among beings and to forget the Being that lets them he. It accepts itself as finite, when it consents to its own negativity, not in the
sense of su-rrendering to an ineluctable fate, but simply in the sense
of letting itself be, thereby achieving its freedom.
Dasein is finite transcendence and its ultimate meaning (that is, the
source of its unity) is time. As transcendence, Dasein is continually
passing beyond beings to Being, that is, is continually coming to Being
in such a way that Being is continually coming to Dasein. This continual coming is Dasein's future. But Being comes to a Dasein that
already is, and this condition of already-having-heen-this is Dasein's
paste Being, then, comes as future to Dasein through Dasein as paste
Finally, because Being comes to Dasein it renders beings manifest,
that is, renders them present to Dasein and Dasein to them. That is

34

THOUGHT

Dasein's present. Now the unity of future-past-present constitutes the

unity of time so that the source of unity of Dasein is the unity of time
itself.
To achieve authenticity in terms of this temporal structure, Dasein
must say "yes" to its finite transcendence by letting Being continue
to come to it through its past. This effort to let Being continue to come
out of 'the future and through the past is what Heidegger caIls Wiederholung. Let us translate "re-trieve."
The use that Bultmann made of this analysis is now a commonplace. I would simply underscore the fact that nothing influenced hirn
more profoundly-and the whole conception of demythologizing is
the proof-than this notion of re-trieve, of letting Being come out of
the future through the past. Dr. Jonas at Drew, speaking for hirnself
as weIl as Bultmann, said:
. . . Th s the demythologizing meant the re-trieving of this substance from
the most: compact, most unyielding, most extreme form of objectification in
which it was locked up, and here indeed the categories evolved in Heidegger's
analysis of existence in Sein und Zeit offered a superior means of bringing to
light the ground from which the projections of doctrine had risen and which
contain their truth, ... So far, I think, I am in complete agreement with my
friend and teacher Bultmann.... 34

We shaIl return to this. For the moment let me remark that the
notion of re-trieve, as indeed the whole analysis of Dasein upon which
Professor J onas' "friend and teacher Bultmann" built his whole theology is based upon the principle that Dasein, as transcendence, transcends first of aIl and most profoundly the subject-object relationship.
How, then, in the same address can Dr. Jonas maintain that the subject-object relationship is intrinsic to the human condition as such,
to the extent that Heidegger's effort to think beyond it would be the
consummate form of his presumption, hybris and arrogance?
After Sein und Zeit Heidegger continued along the way. Being had
been disengaged through the analysis of Dasein as the process of nonconcealment, a-letheia (truth), and the problem of truth itself had
received a lengthy development. It was not surprising then that three
years later he would return to the problem, and in 1930 he delivered
for the first time the lecture known as "On the Essence of Truth."35
34

35

H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," pp. 231-232.

M. Heidegger, Vom Wesen der Wahrheit, 3rd ed. (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1954).

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

-35

What is noteworthy is this: in meditating truth as a-letheia, as nonconcealment, he gradually came to the realization that the concealment somehow precedes the nonconcealment (darkness somehow precedes the emergence into light), so that the revealing process is somehow prior to Dasetri and reveals itself (albeit in beings) to Dasein.
To really think the Being-process, then, should one not try to think
it from the point of view of Being itself as revealing itself to Dasein,
rather than from the point of view of Dasein as was done in Sein und
Zeit? With this new insight the so-called "later" Heidegger begins to
appear.
In the years that follow, ,how does Heidegger endeavor to think the
Being-process from the viewpoint oI Being itself? Being is still fund,amentally a-letheia, the process of nonconcealment, out of which the
ontological difference arises. But since Being reveals itself only in
beings, every revelation is finite, that is, in revealing itself in beings
as beings, it conceals itself in them as weIl. This process of revealment-concealment, when it is thought as proceeding from Being, may
be interpreted as if Being were sending itself to Dasein. Let us say,
then, that Being sends itself, or e-mits (sich schickt) itself to Dasein.
It sends itself to Dasein, therefore Dasein is part of the process;
Dasein is com-mitted (Schicksal) in the e-vent. Taken together, this
e-n1itting of Being and com-mitting of Dasein may he described as a
unified e-vent and called "mittence" (Geschick). This is the e-vent out
of which the ontological difference issues forth.
What constitutesany epoch of time, now, is precisely this mittence
oI Being. Sometimes the epoch is conceived rather narrowly, in terms
of a single person that characterizes it, for example, the epoch/mittence' of "Absolute Idealism" in Hegel; sometimes it is conceived
very broadly, for example, as the whole history of metaphysics. In
any case, aseries of epochs/mittences (Geschick-e) constitute "intermittence" (Ge-schick-te) and this inter-mittence is what Heidegger
means hy history,that is, Being-as-history (Geschichte).
What is the role of Dasein in all this? If Being is essentiaIly a
process of nonconcealment, that is, of revelation-a very secular
revelation, of course - then tl1ere is no revealing unless there be
someone or sorne being to whom and for whom (better perhaps: in
whom) the revelation is made. That being is Dasein. Dasein is the
Da des Seins, the There among beings where the e-vent of a-Ietheia

THOUGHT

36

comes-to-pass. The There is essential to the process, it is correlative

to Being, it lets the Being-process take place, it "tends" Being in
heings--in this sense it is the "shepherd" oI Being. Its task is to be
correlative with Being. Sometimes the spontaneity oI Being is conceived as an address 01' a hail to Dasein. Dasein's correlation, then,
means to 'respond to the hail, to correspond with Being, to acquiesce
to Being's need. This acquiescence to Being as it comes-to-pass in
finite ndttences-this is what Heidegger means hy thought.
Two precisions and we come immediately back to Dr. Jonas and
DrewI 'The first concerns thought. Thought of such a kind that thinks
Being-as-history must be historical thought. What this means we see
most clearly in th~ case of dialogue with another thinker. Let us take
the mittence oI Being to Kant (the whole Kant book is an example
of this). To think historically the mittence of Being to Kant means
to recognize at the outset that this mittence was finite, permeated by
a "not." To dialogue with Kant means to re-trieve that mittence to
Kant: to let Being come again (future) through what Kant said
(past) and acquiesce to it by rendering it present in language now
(present). Thought oI this nature that is structured by the unity oI
Iuture-past-present is proIoundly historical thought. And it means
that the thinker may learn to say not what Kant said hut what he did
not say and could not say because the mittence was finite.
The second precision is more concerned with Being. By dialoguing
in this historical fashion with Heraclitus, Heidegger makes another
re-trieve" We recall that in describing the phenomenology of Sein
und Zeit as "hermeneutic" there was implied a certain ambiguity
of the word legein as meaning, on the one hand, to layout in the open
(therefore to make manifest), and, on the other, to articulate speech.
This amhiguity plagued Heidegger. Again and again he approached
it in terrns oI the problem of Logic (logos). But in 1944 he achieved
areal hreak-through when he explicitly meditated the word logos as
it appears in Heraclitus. 36 Heidegger endeavored to let Being come
again to himselI through what Heraclitus said about logos and articulate in the present what Heraclitus did not say and could not say,
na,mely this: that logos, as the Being-process of gathering together
beings unto themselves, is as such the origin of language. Here at last
36

M. Heidegger, "Logos," Vortrge und Au/stze (Pfullingen: Neske, 1954), pp.

207229.

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

37

was the secret of hermeneutic: Being is not simply related to language; Being and Language-that is, original Language, Language
in its origins - are one. Everything that has been said up to now
about the Being-process as the e-vent out oI which the ontological difference issues is now to be said of aboriginal Language. Being for
the contemporary Heidegger is thought not only as A-letheia. Being
"is" Logos as weIl.
No wonder, then, that in the Consultation on Hermeneutics Heidegger's notion of foundational thinking should be at issue. No wonder,
either, that Dr. Jonas' incisive critique should cut into the issue so
deep. What more needs to be said hefore we conclude?
In the first place, there is one curious fact. Dr. J onas is quite
willing '10 make his own Heidegger's notion of re-trieve in Sein und
Zeit, whereby Dasein achieves its authenticity because it lets Being
come continually through the paste And yet foundational thinking of
Being-as-event is nothingmore than letting Being come again through
what has been said by another poet or thinker, that is, through the
past. Foundational thought of the later Heidegger has exactly the
same structure as re-trieve in Sein und Zeit. What is the difference?
In Sein und Zeit the accent was on Dasein; nO,\\1 it is on Being itself.
But the shift of accent was imposed on Heidegger by a realiza'tion of
the nature of Being that Sein und Zeit discerned: Being as a-letheia
(that is, as -lethe [concealment] which precedes revelation), must
be conceived as prior to man. How is it, then, that Dr. Jonas can
accept re-trieve in the early Heidegger and 'reject it now when the
only shift is one of accent imposed by fidelity to the fundamental experience itself? I would wonder - this is said very respectfullywhether Dr. Jonas, together with his "friend and teacher Bultmann"
have 'any right to part of Heidegger (that is, the notion oI re-trieve)
if they are not willing to accept hirn whole. 37
My second point concerns the claim that Heidegger, when all is
said and done, really conceives Being as a being: ". . . For surely a
'Being' that acts must be; that which takes the initiative must exist;
what reveals itself had a before when it kept hidden and thus has a
beyon d the act 0 f revea1lng. . . ."38
belng
Here, I think, the problem is one of language rather than of con31

38

See H. J onas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 215.

H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 223.

38

THOUGHT

eeption. But no one is more aware of the problem than Heidegger.

" .. Thediffieulty," he writes in 1957, "lies in language. Our oeeidental Ianguages are [all] in one way or another languages of
metaphysieal thought.... "39 The reason why the second part of Sein
und Zeit never appeared is that the neeessary language failed. For
the lallguage of Sein und Zeit, despite Heidegger's own best efforts,
remains a metaphysieal Ianguage - that is, onto-theo-logieal in
nature.. 4 'O
But the question is not whether or not Heidegger's language is always llappy; the question is whether his insight is legitimate. The
essential, as far as I can see, is that his conception of Being in the
later period is as rigorously phenomenologieal as ever it was in Sein
und Zeit. By that I mean that whatever is said about it is said in terms
of that process of a-letheia that lets beings be un-concealed to Dasein.
When Heidegger speaks of Being as holding the pri1macy, that it
e-mits itself, reveals-coneeals itself, addresses a hail to Dasein, what
Heidegger is insisting on is that Dasein is not its souree. But when he
speaks of the eorrelation (Zusammengehrigkeit) of Being and
Dasein, of Being's need for its Da, he is reaffirming with a different
aecent 'what he said in Sein .und Zeii: " ... 'there is' Being only so
long as Dasein is. . . ."41
Finally I eome to the so-ealled "fatalism" of Heidegger. The word
"fateful" translates geschicklieh, the adjectival form of Geschick
(that is, "mittence" of Being). Geschicklieh therefore means not
"fateful" hut "mittent." Here as hefore Heidegger is eoncemed with
a phenomenon; what is significant only is that it as a matter of fact
takes plaee. If we were to look for its proper equivalent in Sein und
Zeit, it 'would be in the notion of matter-of-factness (Faktizitt) or
thrown-ness (Geworfenheit) of Dasein. In any ease, Heidegger has
more than once repudiated any notion of ineluctable necessity, such
as a dialectical process suggests; so much so that if one were to re
proach hirn in this regard I would think it more valid to say not that
39 "Das Schwierige liegt in der Sprache. Unsere abentlndischen Sprachen sind in
je verschiedener Weise Sprachen des metaphysischen Denkens. . ."-M. Heidegger,
Identitt .und Differenz (Pfullingen: Neske, 1957), p. 72.
40 See M. Heidegger, Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief ber den
"Humanismus" (Bern: Francke, 1947), p. 72.
41 "Allerdings nur solange Dasein ist . . . 'gibt es' Sein. . . ."-M. Heidegger, Sein
und Zeit, 9th ed. (Tbingen: Niemeyer, 1960), p. 212.

39

HEIDEGGER AND GOD

history is unified by ineluctable necessity for Heidegger, but rather

that it has no unity at all.
If mittence is not fate, how explain Heidegger's capitulation to
Hitler? Here, I should like it understood that it is not my business
to justify before the eyes of men Heidegger's personal history. But
for my part I am interested in the philosophy of Heidegger, I have
not nlarried hispolitical paste I suggest that we examine his philosophical experience and leave his conscience to God. The question is:
Is there anything in the philo.sophy of Heidegger that compelled a
surrender to Nazism? With reserve for better judgment, I think the
answer is "no." An epoch of history is a mittence of Being, an e-vent
of nonconcealment out oi which the difference between Being and
beings emerges. Heidegger's primal concern is viith the interrogation
of that difference as sueh in its basic structure. In its deepest intention
all ontic considerations, whether in terms of politics, sociology, psychology, anthropology, existentialism, or Heidegger's own Nazi past,
are philosophically irrelevant. The worst that can be said out of fairness to his philosophy in the context of the Nazi experience is not
that his philosophy compelled the capitulation but that it was unable
to prevent it.
CONCLUSION

Two years aga at a reception, someone who had read my book

made reference to the chapter on the Epilogue to What is Metaphysics? that begins (banally enough) hy saying: "1943 was a prolific
year." The gentleman said: "I rememher 1943 weIl, Father. I was
just talking Ito some of your friends about it, regaling them with
amusing stories-they laughed and laughed. You know in 1943 I
was in one of the concentration camps. It was a very prolific year
indeed." On another more forlmal occasion, someone with the same
experience asked: "What do you see in Heidegger? What can you
hope for as a Christian from the thought of that God-less man?" In
effect, the same question lies behind Dr. Jonas' reproach to the theologians at Drew: "My theological friends, my Christian friendsdon't you see what you are dealing with? Don't you sense if not see
the profoundly pagan character oi Heidegger's thought? ... "42
42

H. Jonas, "Heidegger and Theology," p. 219.

THOUGHT

40

Why are Christians interested in Heidegger's thought though his

thought is a God-Iess thought? Because there is truth in Heidegger
and wherever there is truth there is God. For a Christian the Word
of God, the eternal Logos, became man, and at one moment in His
history, quiteaware of the malice of men, He said "I am ... the
truth ... Everyone who is of the truth hears my voice."43 We may
take this to mean "I am the truth. If anyone attends to the truth, it is
My voiee that he hears."
What precisely that truth in Heidegger may be, may be difficult
to say. Perhaps it is only a philosophical truth: the ontological difference as such. But that much would be gain. Perhaps there is in hirn
a theological truth. Whether or not there is truth to be gained in Heid
egger's own suggestion of the analogy between his thinking and theology remains to be seen. It would be based on the analogy that would
say: as foundational thinking is to the e-vent of the ontological dif
ference, so theological thinking (the thinking of faith) is to the revealing word of God. But here the matter is difficult and it must be
left to the theologians themselves.
What do we Christians hope for from Heidegger? That he quit his
way, do penance and return to the Father's house? Not necessarily.
For my part 1 would hope that he would simply be true to hirnself,
follow his call, pursue his way to the end. Will this bring hirn to God?
That is beside the point. The question is not how Heidegger comes
to God but how God comes to Martin Heidegger. This is the advent in
which a Christian hopes: the voice of a radically transcendent God
comes not out of Being-a phenomenologist's Being-but breaks into
this kingdom from without.
If any man is true to hirnself within the "kingdom of Being," if he
remains attentive to "the most ancient of ancients in western thought
-the primal ancient that hides itself under the name of truth," the
voice of a radically transcendent God can at least make itself heard.
If, true to himself, Heidegger responds to Being as Holy and begins
to comprehend the meaning of "divine," then perhaps he will recog
nize that voice if it speaks and at long last be able to call God "God."

43

lohn 14.; 6, and 18: 37.