Gud, metafysik och ontoteologi

Abstract

This article analyzes the use of metaphysics to speak of God within theology. More specifically, the charge of ontotheology levelled against Thomas Aquinas, in particular by Jean-Luc Marion and John Caputo, are being analyzed and criticized, not only with the help of thinkers like John Knasas and W. Norris Clarke, but also Marion himself. Because this article also examines the change of heart that Marion had about Aquinas's metaphysics during the 1990s, his position now being that Aquinas was not a producer of ontotheology. However, the article also asks a specific question of whether there can be a metaphysics that safeguards an objective standard for our knowledge and assertions, but that does not reduce the divine mystery to the categories of human reason, something that ontotheology allegedly does. With this question in mind, I examine Erich Przywara's version of the doctrine of the analogy of being, that he derived from Aquinas, and which he developed, at least in part, to answer Karl Barth's criticism against this doctrine. I look specifically at his idea of essence in-and-beyond existence, which describes a dynamic in our ontological constitution that Przywara sees as fundamental for all contingent existence. Other parts of his doctrine that are mentioned are the difference between "philosophical metaphysics" and "theological metaphysics" and the idea of the principle of non-contradiction as "negative reductive formality". My conclusion is that although Przywara's doctrine avoids the charge of ontotheology, it does not suffice as a metaphysic that offers an objective standard.