Abstract

Heidegger's thinking on God is examined in terms of four stages: the period before Being and Time; the meaning of Being ; the history of the truth of Being ; the clearing of Being . ;In the Habilitationsschrift the Scholastic notions of transcendental being and intentionality provide Heidegger with a framework to pursue the question of Being. The lack of a developed subjectivity of the subject in Scholasticism motivates Heidegger to develop the notion of Dasein as free transcendence in the Being and Time period. Heidegger combines the Scholastic notion of being as transcendence with the modern notion of transcendence as "my activity" . The question of divine transcendence becomes subordinated to human transcendence. ;In the "turn" Heidegger finds transcendence to be subjectivity, in which Being is metaphysically grounded in a being, so that it becomes forgotten. The "death" of the God of philosophy and the problem of "onto-theo-logy" surface: God is absent through subjectivity because the traditional philosophical concept of God is not "divine enough." In the Pre-Socratics, poets and mystics the later Heidegger seeks an experience of Being through non-metaphysical language, in which God may again speak. In the thing as "fourfold" he seeks an experience of Being and world free from subjectivity, in which God may again be present. ;In distinguishing Being as first from modern transcendence as subjectivity, Heidegger's thinking moves closer to his roots in the Scholastic notion of being as transcendental. Heidegger's earlier characterizing of Dasein as free transcendence can be understood onto-theo-logically. Disengaging Being from the grounding activity of being allows the question of God to be posed anew. ;Of the three ways theology speaks of God, the ways of negation and eminence emerge as compatible with Heidegger's thinking on God. The way of causality remains inadequate, not only for Heidegger but for Aquinas and Eckhart as well. For Aquinas God as "cause" is analogical, extrinsic to the nature of Godhead. Eckhart goes behind grounding as the duality of Creator-creature, cause-effect, to the sameness of Being as ground