UDC

1(091).14

Authors

Svetlana A. Konacheva
Russian State University for the Humanities; National Research Nuclear University MEPhI (Moscow Engineering Physics Institute); Miusskaya pl. 6, Moscow, 125993, GSP-3, Russian Federation;
e-mail: konacheva@mail.ru

Abstract

This article deals with the application of the categories of historicity and eventfulness to describing the inner divine life in contemporary religious-philosophical thought. The author analyses the influence of Hegel’s philosophy of history and Heidegger’s hermeneutics in his later works on the attempts of modern theologians to overcome the distance between God’s inner immanence and His eventful presence within history. The paper studies key ontological concepts of Eberhard Jüngel’s post-metaphysical theology: the divine being in becoming; presence interpreted as absence; self-identity achieved by self-giving. Part 1 of the article discusses Jüngel’s early works, where the divine being pro se is thought to be identical with His being pro nobis. The main focus is on the category of becoming, interpreted as the ontological place of the divine being. Jüngel’s ontology is specific due to the fact that it is based on Christology, which sees the identification of God with Jesus as a continuing event. Part 2, using Jüngel’s later works, analyses the concept of divine essence which is identical to divine selflessness. The author emphasizes that Jüngel develops the concept of positivity of transience to avoid the incoherence between the concept of the divine being and the event of divine self-determination at the cross. The description of the divine being through the reference to the concepts of nothing, transience, and death allows Jüngel to overcome the metaphysics of presence. The divine being as an event is revealed only in such dialectical transcendence which in the strict sense should be thought as immanence. The author of this paper argues that Hegel’s project in modern theology is a unique synthesis of ontology and Christology, where God’s being is understood as an event of His coming to Himself.

Keywords

G.W.F. Hegel, M. Heidegger, E. Jüngel, post-metaphysical theology, historicity, eventfulness, divine being, becoming, being in becoming, divine presence, divine self-identity

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