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i. what is man? In the nal analysis, why and by what right would one admit into the eld of university disciplines something like a philosophy of religion? In one view, it actually deals with religion, and not philosophy; and what is more, according to the most radical but also the most widespread hypothesis, it deals with a religion that asserts itself as revealed. But this in turn means that it will dene its object with complete autonomy, as the organized collection of articles of belief (credo, creed). In such a case, we might do best to turn to sacra doctrina, which is to say to scientia theologica, or if need be, outside of the exemplary case of Christianity, to appeal to any body of doctrine that would offer the stability and referential quality (whatever these may turn out to be) of a collection of things believed and held as true. Or, one could request for an alleged philosophy of religion a place within philosophy proper. But, in this case, could religion claim a status particular enough to become the object of a separate philosophy, one that would be reserved for it alone? In fact, does all that is summed up in this religion in question not simply reduce to one of the three objects of metaphysica specialis, without any more special particularity than its other objects (the soul and the world)? Does religion likewise not belong to the secondary philosophies, such as rational psychology, rational cosmology, physics, and so on? In this sense, every philosophy of religion would be reduced to one of the secondary philosophies, inscribed within metaphysica specialis, which is itself subjected to metaphysica generalis, that is, ontologia, and thus to the system of metaphysica as such.
* Translated by Stephen E. Lewis. This article is the text of Professor Marions inaugural lecture as the John Nuveen Professor of the Philosophy of Religion and Theology at the University of Chicago School of Divinity. 2005 by The University of Chicago. All rights reserved. 0022-4189/2005/8501-0001$10.00
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Knowing man thus requires referring him to God the incomprehensible and thus by derivation to grounding incomprehensibility in the incomprehensible, by virtue of mans being its image and likeness. Augustine, too, comes to this conclusion: whereas Saint Paul, for his part, writes that no one among men knows the secrets of man except the spirit of man which is in him (1 Cor. 2:11) and thus assumed that man comprehends the secrets of man, Augustine does not hesitate to write on the contrary that tamen est aliquid hominis, quod nec ipse scit spiritus hominis, qui in ipso est, tu autem. Domine, scis ejus omnia, quia eum fecisti (yet there is something of the human person which is unknown even to the spirit of man which is in him. But you, Lord, know everything about the human person; for you made humanity). Beginning from this unknowing of myself, who is nevertheless known by anotherGod aloneit is necessary to make use of the process of confessio, or rather the constitutive duality of a doubly oriented confessio, oriented toward my ignorance of self and toward anothers knowledge of me. Contear ergo quid de me sciam, contear et quid de me nesciam . . . (Accordingly, let me confess what I know of myself. Let me confess too what I do not know of myself. For what I know of myself I know because you grant me light, and what I do not know of myself, I do not know until such time as my darkness becomes like noonday before your face).30 Man differs innitely from man but with a difference that he cannot comprehend, and which, in order properly to respect it, he should not comprehend. Not only does man know that he does not know himself, even if this were only because within his most intimate depths he discovers an unfathomable memory: Magna vis est memoriae, nescio quid horrendum, Deus meus, profunda et innita multiplicitas. Et hoc animus est et hoc ego ipse sum. Quid ego sum Deus? Quae natura sum? (Great is the power of memory, an awe-inspiring mystery, my God, a power of profound and innite multiplicity. And this is mind, this is I myself. What then am I, my God? What is my nature?).31 But above all, man
29 Gregory of Nyssa, On the Making of Man, in Gregory of Nyssa: Dogmatic Treatises, etc., trans. William Moore and Henry Austin Wilson, vol. 5 of Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers of the Christian Church, Series II, ed. Philip Schaff and Henry Wace (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1965), pp. 39697 (translation modied). 30 Confessiones 10.5.7, citing at the end Psalm 89:8 (ODonnell, p. 121; Chadwick, pp. 18283). 31 Confessiones 10.17.26 (ODonnell, p. 129; Chadwick, p. 194). A strong and frightening echo of such a horror is found in both Luther and Calvin, as B. A. Gerrish has superbly demonstrated; see his To the Unknown God: Luther and Calvin on the Hiddenness of
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46 Paul Ricur, Hermeneutique de lidee de Revelation, in La Revelation, ed. Daniel Cop pieters de Gibson (Bruxelles: Facultes universitaires Saint-Louis, 1977), p. 46.
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