Abstract

The project of Western ontotheology, if correcdy understood, is not exhausted; it can and should be thoroughly renewed and completed before it can be criticized or relativized. This article sets out some conditions for such a retrieval. After the death of modern autonomy, the differential unity of faith, philosophy, and theology must be re-thought and self-consciously practiced. The metaphysical reconnaissance of all types of being, which has been dominated by objectivity and theory, must be retrieved and completed by a not-yet existing philosophy of personality (including speaking, communication, giving, interpersonal history, tradition, community) before the question of God can be asked in philosophy. Persons cannot be understood as they are from the traditional perspective of philosophical theory. To do justice to a person (in phenomenology as much as in practice) presupposes that I address the person (you) who addresses me. God, who is neither being, nor a (supreme) being, can be evoked through a combination of metaphoric and apophatic language (in which interpersonal metaphors play an important role); but (philosophical and theological) theory unavoidably reduces God to an idol (i.e., a finite god), unless it, caught in a contemplative movement, is integrated in prayer