Abstract

The relationship that obtains between philosophy and Christian theology has been variously understood, both from within the Church and from outside of the Church, for the greater part of the Church’s historical existence. The Balthasarian overcoming of the conflation of philosophy and theology in German Idealism holds great promise for helping both contemporary philosophers and contemporary theologians to find a way to properly distinguish their respective sciences from one another in order properly to relate them once again.This paper offers an outline of the positions of Aquinas and of Heidegger, from both of whom Balthasar is able to draw in a manner that is at once both sympathetic and critical. The author concludes that Balthasar provides a model for a “post-‘postmodern’” philosophy that is able all at once to operate phenomenologically, ontologically, and hermeneutically